SINGAPORE - A 39-year-old man was charged on Saturday (Oct 14) for making a threat about a bomb on a cruise ship.
At about 2.30pm on Friday, Neo Hui Ghim had allegedly sent an e-mail to Resorts World Cruises' customer service with the header "Bomb at Resorts World Cruises".
According to court documents, Neo had written to the cruise operator saying "please return me back my monies else the ship will explode and everyone dropped into the sea."
He was arrested on Friday for his alleged involvement in a case of communicating false information of a harmful thing, police said in a statement on Saturday.
At 4.03pm on Friday, the police were alerted by a cruise operator to an alleged bomb threat onboard a cruise ship berthed at Marina Bay Cruise Centre.
In response to the threat, the police, together with the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority and security officers from Marina Bay Cruise Centre conducted extensive checks on the cruise ship.
No threat items were found onboard the vessel.
Through follow-up investigations, officers from Central Police Division established the identity of the suspect and arrested the man within three hours of the reported bomb threat.
Neo has been remanded at the Institute of Mental Health for medical examination.
If found guilty, he can be jailed for up to seven years, be fined up to $50,000, or both.
As a result of the additional security checks on the cruise ship, operations were halted and led to a two-hour delay to the boarding process, affecting about 4,000 passengers.
"The police treats all security threats seriously and will not hesitate to take action against anyone who causes public alarm with false threats," said the police.
"Beyond the fear and inconvenience caused to other members of the public, the making of false threats comes at a cost of public resources that have to be deployed to deal with the incident."
In January 2016, a hoax threat to bomb City Hall posted on a social media website triggered 95 per cent of Public Transport Security Command's manpower to be diverted to respond to the threat. The perpetrator was sentenced to 18 months' jail for claiming he was going to bomb a national icon in the heart of the city.
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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.