Two Indonesian helpers jailed in Singapore over financial support for Isis-linked boyfriends
- Judge said Singapore ‘cannot be seen as a springboard for assistance to terrorist groups’
- The Islamic State sympathisers promised to marry the Indonesian maids after contacting them online
One helper was jailed for three years and nine months, and the other received 18 months’ imprisonment, as District Judge Christopher Tan emphasised the importance of deterring others from committing similar crimes.
The offence of foreigners sending money back to their home countries to finance terrorism was hard to detect, even with technological advances, he said.
Singapore detains Indonesian domestic workers over terrorism financing
“Given these conditions, if you do catch [a perpetrator], a stiff message has to be sent out to show that this is not acceptable,” he said. “The consideration is that once [cases] take on a translational element, it impinges on the reputation of Singapore [which] cannot be seen as a springboard for assistance to terrorist groups.”
Both women had not met the men they thought they would be marrying, who were both terrorist sympathisers, the court heard. It is not clear from court documents if the two maids knew one another.
In the case of one of the maids, Retno Hernayani, the 36-year-old divorcee’s fiancé – a sympathiser of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) – established a relationship with her through frequent video calls from April 2018 until she was detained by the Internal Security Department on August 20, 2019.
To win her over, Fikri set up a mineral water business with her, and had visited her village at Lampung on Sumatra to gain the confidence of her family. Retno planned to cut short her employment contract to marry Fikri in December 2019.
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Retno contributed S$40 (US$29) of her own money and collected S$100 more in donations from three other maids at Paya Lebar knowing that the money could be used to support Isis-affiliated Indonesian extremist network Jemaah Anshaut Daulah (JAD) and other militant groups.
She sent the money to Fikri, who used part of the funds to make a donation to a purported religious charity Aseer Cruee Centre (ACC).
She did so even though there were reasonable grounds for her to believe that the money could be used for militant violence causes, such as buying bullets, rifles, grenades and bombs to fight against “enemies of Islam” and to send fighters into the conflict zones, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Cheng Yuxi told the court.
