Singapore has deported 26 Bangladeshi migrant workers late last year and jailed one for supporting “the armed jehad ideology” of terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the ISIS, authorities said on Wednesday.
The men, who were working in the construction industry here, were detained between November 16 and December 1 last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs said.
Investigations showed that they supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Some of them had considered waging armed jihad overseas, but they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, said the MHA.
The 26 deported were members of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical figures like Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni Islamic lecturer alleged to have ties with militant group Al-Qaeda.
Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The Bangladeshi authorities were informed of the circumstances of their repatriation. The jailed man was not a member of the study group, but was discovered to have been undergoing radicalisation. He supported extremist preachers and possessed jehadi-related material.