The Risk Professional: Mas Selamat to be sent back to Singapore

Mas Selamat is a huge embarrassment to Singapore. He escaped from a high-security prison and then crossed the narrow strip of water that separates the island from the Malay peninsula. There, he hid out in a small village, hardly ever leaving the house he was granted some form of accommodation in. Malaysia's intelligence services found him. Singapore's highly efficient border controls swung into action at an unprecedented level and with remarkable speed - but he did not leave the country through an official border crossing.

Malaysia wanted to question him: he was, after all, a major terrorism suspect with links to several organisations that Malaysia's anti-terrorist authorities are anxious to root out. Singapore, in effect, said "send him back when you've finished with him."

Mas escaped when visitors asked to see him. On the way to the visitors' room, he said he wanted to go to the toilet and asked that his handcuffs be removed. Once in the toilet, he simply disappeared. The prison governor resigned but final responsibility for his escape has never been ascertained or, if it has, no full public statement has ever been made.

It's not the first time he has escaped custody: last time he made it from Singapore into Johor in southern Malaysia where he travelled in a small boat to Indonesia. The result of that was a tightening of immigration controls at all official jetties. However, there are many fishing villages from which boats leave unsupervised and transfer from one boat to another at sea is an established method for some to travel, unnoticed, between Malaysia and Indonesia.

The handover was conducted in secrecy and the precise date of handover has not been disclosed. Nor has the location at which Singapore will hold Mas, suspected of planning attacks on Singapore's rail system. There are also reports that he had plans to arrange the hijack of an airliner and crash it into Changi Airport.

MAS is accused of being the chief of the Singapore cell of Jemaah Islamiyah.