The Ministry of Home Affairs said the eight construction and marine workers were detained last month for allegedly being members of the group Islamic State in Bangladesh and are now under investigation.
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ISB was set up in March 2016 by one of the eight suspects, identified as 31-year-old Rahman Mizanur, and the group was plotting attacks in Bangladesh including targeting government and military officials for assassination, the MHA said.
Singapore said there was no indication of a group connection between the eight men recently detained and those arrested a year ago, although some of them were personally acquainted.
According to a statement from the Singaporean government, the men were members of the group “Islamic State in Bangladesh” – or ISB – and planned to travel to Syria to join ISIS.
Many of them were released by the police in Bangladesh after they gave undertakings to the police.
In Dhaka on Tuesday, Bangladesh’s police chief acknowledged that five Bangladeshis had been expelled from Singapore, but he did not say when they were sent home.
The men, aged 26 to 34, were all working legally in the construction and marine industries.
Some of the eight detainees chanced upon members of the radical religious group who were deported for terror links past year, but there is no indication that the eight detainees from ISB were part of this group.
Giving further details on May 4, authorities said the group had a hierarchical structure with a leader, deputy leader and members assigned specific roles such as finance.
The members had also planned to recruit other Bangladeshi nationals working in Singapore to expand their group and had raised funds to buy firearms to carry out their planned terror attacks in Bangladesh.
Besides the eight detained, MHA also indicated that another five Bangladeshi workers in Singapore were investigated under the ISA.
“Investigations showed that they were not involved in ISB but nevertheless possessed and/or proliferated jihadi-related materials, or supported the use of armed violence in pursuit of a religious cause”, the ministry said. The infamous group has seized large areas in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate on the territories under its control.
Meanwhile, there is no information on when the eight detained men are expected to be charged or deported. The ambiguity of this situation is due to the fact that these are allegedly the first detentions under the Internal Security Act involving a foreign workers’ cell.
Islamist militants in Bangladesh have targeted atheist bloggers, academics, religious minorities and foreign aid workers in a series of killings that dates back to February 2015 and has claimed at least 20 lives.
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Chairman of the MWC Yeo Guat Kwang said in a Facebook post on 3 May that the MWC would continue to work closely with foreign workers, advising them to stay vigilant and to report any suspicious behaviour to either the MWC or to the relevant authorities.
