24 year old Ahmad Kamal was sentenced to jail for 30 months on Friday for having sex with and impregnating 2 minors.

After he found out about the pregnancies, he indicated that he did not want to take responsibility and told them to eat lots of pineapple to induce a miscarriage.

The girls, in secondary school, had met the man through an online chat line ‘tagged’ and become friends with him.

The two girls were aged 14 and 15 at the time of the offences. He met the two and had consensual sex with them separately between January and March of this year.

The offences occurred mostly in staircase landings in Taman Jurong, Clementi and Bedok North.

He had not used a condom during the sex and had impregnated both girls.

The prosecutor asked for 30 months jail. This was based on Ahmad’s decision not to use condoms and the wide age gap between him and the victims.

The older victim had an abortion while the younger victim carried her pregnancy to term and is putting the baby up for adoption.

Ahmad was not represented by a lawyer but pleaded for leniency based on the fact that he needs to help his parents raise his family. He is 1 child out of 12 in the family.

District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim agreed with the prosecution and handed down a 30 month jail term.

The maximum penalty for the offences is a 10 year jail term and a fine. 

A 38 year old SAF Lieutenant Colonel was sentenced to 5 months jail on Friday for having commercial sex with an underage prostitute.

Emlyn Thomas Thariyan had allegedly paid the 17 year old prostitute $5000 for sex in February of 2011.

He had initially denied the charges but was found guilty after a 10 day trial earlier this year, however he is now appealing the case.

Thariyan had asked to address the court himself and the judge had allowed it.

When he spoke to the court, he started by saying that he has served this country impeccably. He also said that he had already given up 2 years of his life over this case.

Although the court found him guilty, he continues to insist that he is not guilty of this charge and he is appealing both the conviction and the sentence.

He highlighted that the case was one where it was his words against the underage prostitute’s words.

As he is appealing the case, he was granted bail with a bail set at $30,000.

A Briton, who got into a fight at a Halloween party, was jailed for only 1.5 years on Thursday. James Daniel Rhodes, 36, fractured the skull of Australian Mr Ronald Tan, 34, and was convicted of causing grievous hurt. Mr Tan later died from a damaged heart valve, in Batam.
 
Rhodes was also ordered to pay $32,000 in compensation to Mr Tan's mother. This is for medical expenses, loss of her son's income and transport expenses, reports The Straits Times. 
 
Rhodes, a former bank officer, was also found guilty of punching Mr Kevin Michael Hubbard, 31, an interior designer, at the same party. He is appealing against the conviction and sentence and is out on bail of $25,000.
 
During the trial, Deputy Public Prosecutor Sanjiv Vaswani told the court that Rhodes had been invited by a friend to the party on Oct 23, 2010 at The Spinnaker condominium near Newton. There, Rhodes got into an argument with Mr Tan. The Briton was told to leave but traded blows with one of the hosts in the lift. He was brought back to the apartment to change his bloodied shirt for a fresh one but while being ushered out again, he assaulted Mr Hubbard before punching Mr Tan in the face.
 
A guest at the party testified that Mr Tan landed very heavily on his back with a "very bad noise". "It was like a watermelon bursting," she had told the court.
 
Rhodes then left for home. He was arrested the next day. His lawyer, Mr Sunil Sudheesan, had argued that his client had felt threatened at the party and had reacted in fear of his life.
 
Rhodes could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined or caned.

PRESS RELEASE:

Today in Singapore's High Court, a hearing to strike out the application by the plaintiff in the matter of Wee Kim San Lawrence Bernard & Attorney General was held. At this juncture, the AG has managed to strike out Mr Wee's application, as the Assistant Registrar concurred with their argument that Mr Wee lacks locus standi, or standing to be heard by the Court on this matter. In today's decision, the Assistant Registrar of the Court determined that Mr Wee had failed to show where the government had violated his Constitutional rights in its failure to clarify the position that homosexual males are protected from discrimination under Article 12 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore. 

For the Attorney-General's Chambers, Ms Aurill Kam Su Cheun argued that the current Tripartite Guidelines for employers created with cooperation from the Ministry of Manpower strongly discourage discrimination in the workplace in Singapore.

However, counsel for Mr Wee, Mr M Ravi, strenuously argued for the necessity of a declaration from the Court on the issue of discrimination against homosexuals in relation to Article 12. Mr Ravi contended that the Tripartite Guidelines and even the commitment made through the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to which Singapore is a signatory, are non-binding and provide no legal remedy for homosexual men or women who have been discriminated against in the workplace, as has been the case for Mr Wee. Mr Ravi also highlighted that while the government had made statements to clarify its position on the prohibition of discrimination against women based on sexual orientation in its statements on CEDAW, there has been no equivalent statement by the government on prohibition of discrimination against homosexual men based on sexual orientation. This is compounded by the existence of statue 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes male homosexuality in Singapore. 

Mr Ravi stated that the absence of the Court's declaration on Constitutional protection would be a tremendous set-back for the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Singapore as well as for women as the Constitutional protection from discrimination needs to be clarified by the Court when it comes to cases of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender. 

Today's decision can be appealed by Mr Wee, as was the case in the Tan Eng Hong Standing decision by the Court of Appeal. Mr Tan's case had also originally been struck out by the Assistant Registrar at the High Court. However, Mr Tan proceeded to the Court of Appeal, which issued a definitive judgement in favor of Mr Tan's standing to be heard. 

M Ravi

*Human rights lawyer in Singapore

Singapore blogger Alex Au Wai Pang faces possible contempt of court action for writing and posting articles that the Attorney General’s Chambers said “scandalize” the country’s judiciary.

An Oct. 5 article insinuates there was a plan to manipulate hearing dates on a challenge to the constitutionality of Singapore’s ban on homosexual sex, according to papers filed by the attorney general’s office in the Singapore High Court.

Au is also in contempt by publishing a second article where he alleged the court made an “erroneous” decision in an employment complaint where a gay man claimed he was unfairly treated, the attorney general’s office said in its court filings. Au intends to contest the contempt accusations, his lawyer Choo Zhengxi said today after a hearing on whether the government’s lawyers can proceed with their case.

The attorney general’s office said yesterday it wasn’t appropriate to comment on the merits of its case before the court decided whether it can proceed.

The office in January warned that public comment on the constitutional challenge, that will be heard by Singapore’s top court, could be in contempt. Au apologized last year and deleted a separate article alleging that Singapore’s courts are biased toward the well-connected after he was threatened with prosecution.

Maximum Penalty

Contempt of court carries a possible penalty of a jail sentence, a fine, or both. There’s no maximum penalty specified under Singapore’s constitution.

Singapore in August said it wouldn’t go ahead with potential contempt of court charges against a local cartoonist, Leslie Chew Peng Ee, after he agreed to take down comic strips that he accepted misrepresented how Singapore judges treated individuals depending on their backgrounds.

In June, the attorney general’s office said a warning letter was sufficient punishment for a film maker in a case over videos where two men alleged they were assaulted by police to get confessions.

British author Alan Shadrake was jailed for six weeks and fined S$20,000 ($16,000) in 2011 for accusing Singapore’s courts in a book of succumbing to political pressure and favoring the rich over the poor. Appeal Judge Andrew Phang had said this was the “worst” case of contempt to come before the Singapore courts. Shadrake refused to apologize.

The case is Attorney-General’s Chambers v Au Wai Pang. OS1098/2013. Singapore High Court.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Tan in Singapore at atan17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Douglas Wong at dwong19@bloomberg.net

*Article first appeared on http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/singapore-blogger-au-faces-contempt-of-court-charges.html

A 33-year-old teacher at a primary school in the west allegedly molested four male students on eight separate occasions. Between 2011 and 2012, he is accused of hugging and kissing the boys, and touching one of them in the genitals.
 
On Monday, a trial began against the man over two charges relating to one of the boys, then part of a uniformed group where the man is a teacher-in-charge. In March 2012, he allegedly twice hugged and kissed the student during the lead-up to a competition he was preparing the group for, reports The Straits Times. 
 
The first offence is said to have taken place at the teacher's work station in the school staff room, when the man was giving the student make-up training on how to tie knots. The second allegedly happened about two weeks later in a school store room, where he allegedly also stuck his tongue down the 12-year-old's mouth.
 
The bachelor, understood to be a mother tongue teacher, cannot be named to protect the identities of his alleged victims, who were then aged between 10 and 12. He has been interdicted from his duties with the school.
 
The maximum penalty for outraging the modesty of someone under the age of 14 is a jail term of five years, a fine and caning.

A Singaporean jailed over one of Australia's biggest drug busts has lost his bid for more time to appeal against his sentence.
 
Koh Keng Chuan, 33, had been sentenced to 16 and a half years' jail by the Sydney District Court back in June 2011, after pleading guilty to knowingly taking part in supplying 2,272kg of liquid Ecstasy, reports The Straits Times. 
 
The haul could have been processed into Ecstasy powder with a conservative street value of about A$500 million (S$570 million at current values), which at the time was one of the largest such seizures in Australia.
 
Koh had recently tried to set in motion an appeal.
 
The New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal last Friday turned down his application for an extension of time to seek permission to appeal, finding that his grounds of appeal "lack merit".
 
It noted that the former car salesman and debt collector had made the application more than two years after being sentenced.
 
This was a delay borne of a "desire to take advantage" of a favourable decision concerning sentencing, that was recently handed down by Australia's High Court.
 
The New South Wales court said no error on Koh's sentence had been made, adding: "On his own account, the sentence imposed appears to have been less than he expected."
 
Koh could have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
 
His role in the operation included putting his name to the rental of the space for storing the drugs, which were in the form of a chemical called piperonyl methyl ketone - the second-last step in the Ecstasy manufacturing process - and hiring a van for a delivery.
 
Then 27, he and a 50-year-old accomplice were nabbed on Dec 18, 2006, after the van broke down on a highway in the Australian state of Victoria. This attracted attention from police, who found 68 containers of liquid Ecstasy in it. A search of the storage unit in Sydney later turned up 1,900 litres of the chemical.
 
Both men were sentenced to jail terms in Victoria. They were brought back to New South Wales in 2009.
 
The appeals court's written judgment states that Koh, who left school at the age of 12 and worked in his grandparents' coffee shop, has not seen his father and two brothers, who live in Singapore, since his arrest. His wife - with whom he moved to Malaysia from Singapore in 2005 - was said to have filed for divorce in 2009.
 
He had also been exposed to gang-related activity in Singapore and has a criminal record here.
 
Koh's accomplice, a Chinese national who migrated to Australia in 1989, has applied for permission to appeal against a 191/2 year term for a similar offence.

*illustrated photo

When his ex-girlfriend refused to rekindle their relationship, Peter Lee Chia Wee decided to take revenge by distributing a picture that he had secretly taken of her lying naked on her bed.
 
They had broken up in 2011 but when Lee, 21, visited his ex-girlfriend's flat in Geylang East in January this year, he stayed over and they became intimate. In the middle of the night, he took the picture of her, reports The Straits Times. 
 
When she rejected the idea of resuming their relationship, he set up a Facebook account under a fictitious name, "Rytech Tan", and on March 3, he sent the picture to her and two of her friends from this account.
 
"Tan" also threatened to circulate the picture to her parents and other friends. A while later, Lee sent a text message to her mobile phone to inform her that he had received the image from someone called "Rytech Tan".
 
Lee then created a phony conversation with "Tan" on Facebook, demanding to know his motive in circulating the picture.
 
He took a screenshot of this conversation and sent it to his ex-girlfriend so as to evade suspicion.
 
She went to the police the next day. After lodging the report, she sent a text message informing Lee about it.
 
He realised that the game was up and confessed to her.
 
A district court yesterday sentenced him to 1-1/2 years of probation. He also has to perform 100 hours of community service.
 
He had pleaded guilty last month to insulting the modesty of his ex-girlfriend by taking a picture of her while she was naked without her knowledge.
 
He also admitted to transmitting the picture by electronic means to her Facebook account.
 
The two charges of sending the picture to her friends were taken into consideration by the judge when passing sentence.
 
For insulting his victim's modesty, he could have been jailed for up to a year and fined up to $10,000.

He was furious when the ex-boyfriend of the girl he was going steady with registered a "like" for a comment she had made on her Facebook page. So Marc Brandon Bignalen Sim tried tracking down the man he knew only as Hairee.
 
When he met Mr Benson Aw Jun Hong, who was Hairee's friend, things turned bloody. On Friday, Sim was sentenced to reformative training for slashing Mr Aw with a knife. Both men were 20 years old and full-time national servicemen at that time., reports The Straits Times. 
 
A district court heard that Mr Aw had agreed to meet up with Sim at a block of flats in Yishun at about 8am on June 15. When Mr Aw refused to hand over Hairee's telephone number, Sim pulled out a knife with a 20cm blade and slashed him four times on the legs.
 
He then fled and the victim called the police. The injuries were so serious that Mr Aw suffered a fracture of his right leg and had to undergo two operations.

The Malaysian Insider 

The Malaysia Syariah Court has come under fire from women's rights groups for allowing an alleged rapist to marry his victim who was only 13 years old when she tied the knot last year.

Women's Aid Organisation (WAO) executive director Ivy Josiah said the court should not have consented to the marriage, explaining that it was not a “young marriage” but a “child marriage”.

"Since the girl was only 12 years old, the court must have given them permission to marry. This decision is unacceptable and wrong," she told The Malaysian Insider yesterday.

Under Syariah law, girls below the age of 16 and boys below 18 must get the consent of the Syariah Court before they can marry.

A local daily today reported that Nor Fazira Saad and her alleged rapist Mohd Fahmi Mohamed Alias were married last year because she had been raped.

Their marriage made the news last year, where Nor Fazira's father Saad Mustafa had insisted that “it was better for them to get married than to do something that is not good”.

The couple, who have since divorced, have been thrust into the spotlight again when allegations of rape resurfaced.

Saad was reported as saying that his daughter had lodged a report in July last year claiming that she was raped by two teenagers and Mohd Fahmi.

However, Mohd Fahmi’s parents apparently begged Saad to withdraw the report, fearing that their son will have to bear a harsh punishment for his actions.

"They pestered me for five nights until I decided to withdraw the report six days later... as a father I understand their concern for their son," Saad was quoted as saying.

The marriage was solemnised after both families obtained permission from the Kulim Syariah Court.

Sisters In Islam, which has been a long-time advocate against child marriages, noted that the law had failed to protect the interest of the child.

"The case highlights a legal loophole in Islamic family law that allows an alleged perpetrator to escape further investigation through marriage... by becoming a husband," said its programme manager, Suri Kempe.

"It is deplorable that marriage is being used by alleged rapists as a way to escape prosecution."

The government, she said, had a responsibility to “act upon its pronouncements” and stop rapists from “manipulating religion and culture”.

"The law should reflect the weight Islam puts on protecting children and simultaneously recognise a child’s right to life, health and education as a basic human right.

"The best interest of the child was clearly not a consideration when the Syariah Court approved this marriage application," she said, adding that Muslim and non-Muslim children should not be treated differently.

Josiah said the Syariah Court should be educated that child marriages were unacceptable and outrageous.

"Even health wise, a 13-year-old's body is not ready for child-bearing and such. She is still a child," she said.

She revealed that in the 30-year history of the WAO, there had been similar cases, where men have deliberately raped women to marry them.

"And when their families find out that their daughter has been tarnished and violated, she is deemed not valuable. That no one else will marry her.

"So they marry her off to the perpetrator.”

WAO and other women's groups, Josiah said, have to educate people that rape is a violation and that the woman is the victim.

"That is why rape survivors feel their life is over and why not many of them report their ordeal to the police. This public perception has to change."

Meanwhile, Suri called on the government to amend the “flawed” provision in the law which allowed child marriages.

"We urge the government to make child protection a priority by amending this flawed provision in the law.

"They must put a complete stop to the practice of child marriage, as it entails many economic, social and health risks, and does not protect girls or secure their future," she said, and urged the police to investigate Nor Fazira's rape claims. – November 30, 2013.

*Article first appeared on http://sg.news.yahoo.com/critics-slam-syariah-court-allowing-child-marri...

A man who left his neighbour with serious head injuries after bashing him with an iron bar over a long-simmering dispute was jailed for six months yesterday.
 
Unemployed Sut Yew Khun, 51, hit Mr Goh Sam Choon repeatedly with the bar, fracturing his skull and the bones around his eyes during the fight at the void deck of their Housing Board block in Jurong West, as reported by The Straits Times. The two men lived on the 15th floor of the block.
 
A resident on the fourth floor witnessed the fight on Feb 13 and shouted at Sut, who fled on his bicycle. Mr Goh, a 61-year-old construction industry worker, was taken to the National University Hospital and has since recovered. 
 
Assistant Public Prosecutor Lim Yu Hui said that while it started as a fist fight, Sut had "escalated the violence" by grabbing the metal bar and hitting Mr Goh with it.
 
Defence counsel Yusfiyanto Yatiman pointed out that his client was not armed when the fight began at about 1pm.
 
"He picked up the metal rod from the front basket of his bicycle only after finding himself in a disadvantageous position during the fight," said Mr Yusfiyanto.
 
The court heard that Sut, who remained single so as to take care of his sick mother, used the rod as a bicycle stand as the original equipment was rusty.
 
District Judge Low Wee Ping said Sut, who was convicted for causing grievous hurt with a weapon, had picked up the bar not to defend himself but to inflict very serious injuries on Mr Goh.
 
He could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined for what Judge Low described as an "extremely violent offence".

American singer Leandra Ramm's life was turned upside down after Colin Mak Yew Loong, a 38-year-old Singaporean harassed her for the next six years after he saw her featured on CNN.

They had never met but he contacted her, promising to further her music career. Initially, she was grateful but when she stopped responding to him, he started sending her threatening e-mail messages and telephone calls. It continued right up to 2011 when US authorities sought the help of the Singapore Police, as reported by The Straits Times.

On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty and was convicted for criminal intimidation, harassment, criminal trespass and theft. He admitted to sending 31 threatening e-mail messages to Ms Ramm, 29.

According to a report by The New Paper, in some of the emails Mak sent to the singer, he wrote: "I'll cut your face" and "I am out to smash your f***ing head".

A district court also heard that Mak went on to harass two other foreign musicians. They were Hungarian musician Ms Krasznai Tuende Ilona, 30 and Ukrainian musician Ms Veronika Sakhno, 28.

Mak had also sent threatening e-mail messages to businesswoman Liew Hwei Ken, 46. He claimed she had gone behind his back to engage another photographer, instead of hiring Mak to photograph a model.

Then, in April, he trespassed into the pantry of the St James Church Kindergarten and stole some biscuits. He will be sentenced on Dec 13.

MEDIA STATEMENT 
5 December 2013 
 
AGC’S RESPONSE TO MEDIA QUERIES ON THE “STATEMENT ON AGC ACTION AGAINST ALEX AU” 
 
1. The “Statement on AGC Action against Alex Au” purportedly signed by 170 persons and sent to the media by Mr Jolovan Wham on 29 November 2013 acknowledges that it is important to uphold public confidence in the judiciary, and states that "[i]f Mr Au has erred, then his claims should be rebutted in public." We agree with this. 

2. The article “377 Wheels Come Off Supreme Court's Best Laid Plans” by Mr Au contains allegations of wrongdoing by senior judicial officers. These allegations severely undermine their standing, and the authority of the judiciary as a whole. The hearing to determine whether the article is in contempt of court will be open to the public, and Mr Au will have every opportunity to rebut the charge against him. 

3. The Constitutional right to free speech and expression is not an absolute right, but subject to limits which are expressly provided for in the Constitution. These limits are necessary to protect the reputations of individuals, both private and public, and also the standing of key State institutions, including the judiciary. As important as the right to free speech and expression is, the Constitution recognises that our society as a whole must be safeguarded against statements without basis which injure the reputation of persons or lower confidence in the administration of justice. 

4. Mr Au had previously scandalised the court in the article “Woffles Wu case hits a nerve” which he posted on the same website on 18 June 2012. On that occasion, legal action was not taken against him after he withdrew the article, apologised and undertook that “[he would] not in future put up any post to the same or similar effect”. 

Media Relations Unit 

Attorney-General’s Chambers 

She got the fake donation books for her charity scam printed in Malaysia so no one would spill the beans to the authorities here.
 
Then, within two weeks in May, Santha Devi Lingam, 34, cheated 62 donors of $855, while her sister-in-law, Khamisah Shaik Mohamed, 35, who was also in on the scam, conned 17 victims of a total of $170.
 
On Thursday, Santha was sentenced to six months in jail while Khamisah will spend the next two months behind bars. District Judge Lee Poh Choo said that the duo had "taken advantage of the public generosity and kindness and gone blatantly door-to-door to cheat".
The court heard that Santha came up with the idea of pretending to be a donation collector after seeing such volunteers at a shopping centre.
 
She roped in Khamisah and the pair decided that their "cover" should be the Willing Hearts charity organisation. Santha then used a computer at an Internet cafe in Ang Mo Kio to design the receipt booklets and a donation collector certificate in each of their names.
 
The court heard that each of them worked separately and would show the donation collector certificate and identify themselves as volunteers with Willing Hearts to members of the public.
 
Once a donation was received, they would list the donor's details in the butt of the receipt booklet and issue the forged receipt.
 
They were nabbed after a resident called Willing Hearts to check on the donation drive. The charity body called the police, and both women were arrested at a block of flats in Ang Mo Kio.
 
Both pleaded guilty on Thursday to cheating their victims while Santha also admitted to committing forgery.

*photo for illustrative purpose only

An unemployed woman was jailed for four weeks on Friday for "kicking" a staff nurse on her stomach.
 
Audrey Neoh Sok Hoon, 34, admitted causing hurt to the 25-year-old victim who was seven weeks pregnant at Ward 3 of Alexandra Hospital on Feb 17 this year. A court heard that Neoh was admitted to Tan Tock Seng Hospital on Feb 16 after suffering from fits. She requested to be transferred to Alexandra Hospital which had her medical reports. She was warded at Ward 3.
 
At about 11.20am the next day, the victim was attending to a patient when she heard Neoh talking loudly over the phone. The victim then walked over to Neoh who was in her bed. She proceeded to close the curtain before turning around to ask Neoh to lower her voice.
 
As the victim was turning around to face Neoh, Neoh kicked her in her stomach area. The victim was conveyed to National University Hospital. She experienced abdominal discomfort over the abdomen where she had been kicked but there was no bruising noted. A second charge of using abusive words on the victim was taken into consideration.
 
Neoh, whose sentence was backdated to Nov 28, could have been jailed for up to two years and/or fined up to $5,000 for voluntarily causing hurt.

An Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) specialist who took and gave bribes to grant social visit passes to various foreigners to enter Singapore was jailed for 21 months on Monday. Corporal Mohammed Mustaffa Mohabat Ali, 29, admitted to 12 of 35 charges of corruption. He was ordered to pay a penalty of $8,050 or in default, sentenced to four weeks' jail.
 
A district court heard that Mustaffa, who was attached to Tuas checkpoint, met a Filipino woman at a pub in Paramount Hotel in 2010. He agreed to help her "extend'' her social visit pass by getting a new pass for 30 days for a fee.
 
Through the unidentified Filipina, he met Philibert Tng Hai Swee who told him that he knew of foreigners who were willing to pay him money to for the pass. Mustaffa charged between $250 and $450 per extension. After each successful transaction, Tng would collect payment from all the foreigners concerned, and keep $50 per person for himself before passing the rest to Mustaffa. Mustaffa also assisted foreigners who contacted him directly, charging them $300 to $500 for every pass extension.
 
A total of 33 foreigners, comprising females from the Philippines and Vietnam, participated in Mustaffa's scheme. Mustaffa knew they were working illegally in Singapore.
 
He engaged the services of four individuals to ferry the foreigners on a round trip between Singapore and Malaysia for a fee.
 
He also recruited four colleagues, Mohamed Nazrul Noor Mohamed, Lukmanulhakim Samsun, Nor Hidayat Mohamed Hussain, and Ezhar Kamis, by instructing them to grant the foreigners a new pass for 30 days without carrying out the checks required by ICA. Hidayat left ICA in February 2011.
 
Tng died in October 2011. The others have not been charged.
 
The maximum penalty for corruption is a $100,000 fine and five years' jail on each charge.

The case against the five men accused of spray-painting slogans like "We are one we are legion expect us" and "TSK", the former referring to the global hacktivist group Anonymous, has been fixed for a pre-trial conference (PTC) on Jan 7.
 
Mohamad Fadzly Aziz, 21; Danial Ryan Salleh, 25; Muhammad Qamarul Arifin Sa'adon, 22; and Muhammad Fitri Abu Kasim, 24, had allegedly sprayed those words at about 4am on Nov 5, on the pavement outside Sunshine Plaza at 91 Prinsep Link.
 
Minutes later, the four suspects sprayed a similar slogan on a nearby pillar. At both locations, the four men also sprayed the stylised words "TSK", believed to be a band logo, that they then repeated on the pavement of a taxi stand along Waterloo Street at 4.20am. At about 5am, Mohamad Fadzly and a fifth accused, Muhammad Redzwan Baskin, 26, were suspected to have defaced a wall and pavement at the Scape building at 2 Orchard Link, with a slogan and the logo.
 
The five, who are facing vandalism charges, returned to court on Tuesday. Muhammad Redzwan told the court that he has applied for legal aid, while Mohamad Fadzly said he would do the same. The remaining three have also engaged legal counsel for the PTC on Jan 7.
 
Their bail of $15,000 each has been extended and had their passports impounded. 
 
For each charge of vandalism, the suspects face a mandatory punishment of at least three strokes of the cane.

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind here, a Singaporean man was jailed yesterday for having sex with an underage girl who is now his wife, reports The Straits Times. 
 
District Judge Mathew Joseph said yesterday that the case was "unusual".
 
He said it was the first case of underage sex he has heard where the victim and accused are now a married couple.
 
While the judge said he was prepared to consider the case differently, he said the court did not condone the accused for having sex with the minor - who was then 15 - as the couple were not married at the time of the offence.
 
The accused, a 32-year-old computer technician, married the Singaporean girl in Indonesia a year ago, when she was 16.
 
His wife, now 17, was in court together with his six-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
 
The judge added that he hoped the accused would put the past behind him for the sake of his wife - who is now seven months pregnant - and their unborn child.
 
The sex offences came to light when the accused was probed by the police for a forgery offence.
 
For having sex with the minor, the accused was sentenced to six months in jail.
 
Together with the sex offences, the accused pleaded guilty to 15 charges last month - mostly for cheating - and was sentenced to a total of 18 months behind bars yesterday.
 
The court ordered that the names of the accused and victim be withheld.
 
Deputy Public Prosecutor Victor Lim told the court last month that the victim befriended the accused some time between 2008 and 2009 while playing an online game.
 
She was then around 12 or 13.
 
The two entered into a relationship in December 2011.
 
In the same month, the accused told the victim that he wanted to have sex with her. After she agreed, he drove her to a hotel in Geylang.
 
Their next sexual encounter took place early last year, when she was living with the accused at his Sembawang flat.
 
Soon after that, the victim discovered that she was pregnant. The accused, who was then divorced, made plans to marry her.
 
For one of the forgery offences, the court heard that the accused had faked a letter purportedly from the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in March, after his girlfriend told him that she wanted to quit her studies at a secondary school.
 
Mr Lim said the accused came up with the idea to state in the letter that his girlfriend was suffering from depression and was therefore unfit to attend school.
 
To forge the letter, he went to the IMH's website and made a soft copy of the institute's letterhead. He printed the letter and signed off as "Dr Sharon Chan".
 
He then handed it to his girlfriend's mother to submit to the school.
 
The girlfriend was let off with a conditional warning over the matter.
 
The other offences involved the accused cheating SingTel, his business partners and other persons.
 
He had forged authorisation letters that were submitted to SingTel for the telco to deliver mobile phones to him.
 
He has previous convictions for theft, cheating, forgery, providing false information and criminal breach of trust.
 
The maximum penalty for underage sex, cheating or forgery is 10 years' jail and a fine on each charge.
 
For criminal breach of trust, the maximum penalty is seven years' jail and a fine.

Two Chinese nationals were jailed on Wednesday in separate cases of stealing on board an aircraft last month, reports The Straits Times.  
 
Hawker Hu Yunzhi, 45, was sentenced to a year's jail after he admitted to stealing various currencies amounting to $382 from Indonesian businessman Sugianto Tanoto Kusuma, 41, on board a Silkair plane from Medan to Singapore on Nov 19.
 
In the same court, chef Zhang Jun, 40, was jailed for nine months for stealing a black laptop bag from IT director Mark Ivan Swann, 59, on board a Silkair plane bound for Singapore from Phnom Penh that day.
 
A magistrate's court heard that cabin crew saw Hu take a Louis Vuitton bag from the overhead baggage compartment above Mr Kusuma's seat. He placed it on an aisle seat nearby and proceeded to rummage through the contents of the bag. He then returned the bag to its original location. Hu, who was seated a few rows behind the victim, sat a few rows from his original seat where he remained until landing. Mr Kusuma was asleep then and did not sense that anything was amiss.
 
Upon checking through his bag, he discovered $382 in various currencies missing from his wallet that was kept in the bag. The money, wrapped in a crumpled up bundle of newspapers, was found in the seat pocket at the business class section of the aircraft where Hu had moved to. He was later arrested.
 
The court heard that Zhang was seated behind the Briton when cabin crew saw him opening the overhead baggage compartment and taking the victim's black laptop bag. He placed the bag on his seat and rummaged through the contents before putting it back to its original place.
 
Nothing was stolen from Mr Swann. The two natives from Henan could each have been jailed for up three years and/or fined for theft.

35 year old Ng Eng Huat was ordered to undergo 2 years of treatment after being caught stealing a woman’s bra from her flat while she was sleeping.

Ng had peered into the bedroom of a 25 year old woman’s flat in Bishan in July at around midnight and found her sleeping.

Looking around the room, he saw a bra of hers which was draped over a chair in the room.

Ng had become aroused by the sight and reached in and stole the bra but was caught by one of the woman’s neighbours and reported on.

Upon investigations, police also revealed that Ng had another 11 bras in his possession at his flat.

His lawyer had explained that Ng had been diagnosed with voyeurism and fetishism and was already currently serving a mandatory treatment order which was imposed on him in 2011.

The court agreed with the defence for a light sentence and handed down a sentence of a further 2 year mandatory treatment order for his condition.

Ng was charged under the Miscellaneous Offences Public Order and Nuisance Act.