A WEEK after Muhammad Sazali and his friends were involved in a
gang attack in Clarke Quay in 2003 where a youth died, he escaped
into Malaysia by walking along two water pipes at Marsiling. Seven
years later, he turned himself in. On Wednesday, he was sentenced
to 21/2 years in jail and six strokes of the cane for rioting while
armed with a knife. Muhammad, now 29, was also jailed a year and
three months for deserting the Singapore Civil Defence Force since
April 2003.
Fourteen accomplices involved in the attack have been dealt
with. They received sentences ranging from probation and
reformative training to prison terms of six months to 11/2 years as
well as caning.
The group called themselves the Ubi Boys, after the
neighbourhood they hailed from, and on Wednesday, a district court
heard a blow-by-blow account of how the group planned and carried
out an attack. At about midnight on April 16, four of the group
went down to Jams The Club at Clarke Quay, where they knew the
rival group would be. They were soon joined by the rest of the Ubi
group, most of them arriving in two vans.
A fight, involving knifes and screwdrivers, then erupted between
the two groups. The target of the Ubi group was Mr Suhaimi Salleh,
then 22. He was not injured but his friend Mohamad Sadik Senin, 19,
suffered multiple slash and stab wounds and died at the Singapore
General Hospital at about 3.50am.
The cause of death was determined as acute bleeding of the aorta
and forensic evidence indicated that the injury was likely to have
been inflicted by a screwdriver stabbed into his back and into the
heart.
In May, Muhammad decided to surrender himself to the Malaysian
police, and was jailed four months for entering the country
illegally. He was released on Aug 20 last year and handed over to
the police here.
-- ST