Man, 39, arrested for allegedly making bomb threat on cruise ship

SINGAPORE - A 39-year-old man, who had allegedly made a threat about a bomb on a cruise ship on Friday (Oct 13), will be charged on Saturday.

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.

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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