Mas-terminds

Re: Terrorist's escape, Singapore

Minster Mentor Lee names complacency and Mas Selamat’s cleverness in deceptively winning the trust of his captors as factors in his escape.

Michael Crichton, in the introduction to his book “The Great Train Robbery”, cites studies of prison populations that show that inmates equal the general public in intelligence tests – and yet they are only that fraction of lawbreakers who are caught. Needless to say, those who manage to stay free are of superior minds. Crichton then tells the true story of one such mastermind at work.

Being the leader of a criminal organisation, Mas Selamat would have intelligence above average. The likelihood then is that he would have been able to outsmart his immediate guards. For people of matching or higher intelligence would not have been assigned routine-type guard duties in the first place.

So some safeguards are needed. The guards’ supervisors, and their superiors, must have the ability to see through the tricks and guises of their captives; and they must make it a point to regularly monitor the interaction between captor and captive. Also, there have to be constant rotation of the guards for each captive so that no captive can gain any psychological control over his captor. A further measure is to deliberately disrupt every routine once in a while to prevent set patterns.

Whether these measures were already in place, or are indeed necessary, we will have to wait for the commissioner of inquiry’s report to find out.

Generally, people who succeed against high odds are not just intelligent; they are also very determined and disciplined. In a criminal mind, these traits are a lethal combination.

In the fight against terrorism, authorities worldwide seem to be forever chasing the lizard’s tail – banning steel cutlery after September 11, requiring young and old to remove their shoes after the shoe-bomber, throwing barricades around bars after Bali, heavily-armed guards conspicuously strolling through train stations after London, and forbidding mothers with babies from carrying bottled water aboard after learning of liquid-bomb plots. Authorities just do not seem to get ahead in the game of new attack scenarios.

Short of complacency, Mas Selamat’s escape, September 11, and so on, could be a case of underestimating the enemy – a case of not giving enough regard to top criminals' intelligence, their will, their guts, and their imagination.