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Dylan (not his real name) is a formerly radicalised individual who was previously detained by the Internal Security Department.
- Dylan, 16, was detained under ISA for planning machete attacks at two Singapore mosques, inspired by online far-right ideology. Now rehabilitated, he is pursuing further studies.
- Farhan, influenced by online Israeli-Palestinian conflict videos, planned to kill three Jewish men at a synagogue. He was detained under the ISA, for two years.
- Both youths were radicalised online; their parents urge Singaporeans to pay attention to their children's online activities, and to maintain open communication.
One was a school prefect, often praised by teachers for being hard-working. The other, a sociable church-going boy, had friends of various races and religions growing up.
The families of both Farhan and Dylan (not their real names) had their worlds shattered when Internal Security Department (ISD) officers turned up at their doorsteps after the two young men made plans to carry out killings at places of worship here.
With youth radicalisation in the city-state still a pressing concern, The Straits Times interviewed four formerly radicalised Singaporeans on how they fell into a spiral of online extremism that brought them to the brink of violence.
Farhan was detained in March 2021, when he was 20 years old. Dylan was detained in December 2020 when he was 16, at the time the youngest individual to be dealt with under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for terrorism-related activities.
There have since been three 14-year-old boys who were issued ISA orders for becoming radicalised online. The latest case, which ISD announced in January, was that of a Secondary 3 student who recreated ISIS executions on video games like Roblox, and aspired to travel overseas to fight for the terrorist group.
ISD said youth are getting radicalised faster – for cases between 2020 and 2025, the average time for self-radicalisation was eight months, compared with 14 months for cases in the prior five years.
Across written and face-to-face interviews, the former detainees described the almost innocuous process by which their world views hardened.
