TEMASEK REVIEW
Agence France-Presse, 5 June 2010
A Swiss business consultant was charged in court Saturday
with breaking into a Singapore metro depot and spray-painting
graffiti on a train, for which he could be jailed and whipped with
a cane.
Oliver Fricker, 32, was accused of committing trespass and
vandalism in mid-May, and a district judge who described him as a
flight risk set bail at 100,000 Singapore dollars (71,000 US). His
passport was also impounded.
A worried-looking Fricker told the judge he needed a lawyer and
asked that bail be lowered to 40,000 dollars.
But the judge cut him short and rejected the bail request,
stressing the seriousness of the offence.
The official charge sheet said Fricker, who was arrested on May
25, was with a Briton identified as Lloyd Dane Alexander when he
broke into the suburban depot, a restricted zone surrounded by
fences topped with barbed wire.
Sources familiar with the case told AFP that Alexander was in
Singapore on a tourist visa and left before a police report was
filed.
The charge sheet said Fricker and Alexander vandalised public
property when they cut through a fence and spray-painted two
carriages.
A police spokesman described Fricker as a company consultant but
further details on him were not available from Singapore officials
or Swiss diplomats.
A man named Oliver Fricker is listed in the business networking
website Xing as a senior consultant in Singapore working with a
Zurich-based information technology firm specialising in the
financial sector.
Vandalism is punishable by up to three years’ jail or a maximum
fine of 2,000 Singapore dollars, plus three to eight strokes of a
wooden cane, a punishment dating from British colonial rule.
An American teenager, Michael Fay, garnered global headlines in
1994 when he was jailed and caned in Singapore after he was found
guilty of vandalising several cars. Fay was caned despite a US
appeal for clemency.
Prosecutors in the train vandalism case, arguing for the high
bail amount, said Fricker had been due to leave for Switzerland two
days after his arrest.
The break-in, believed to have taken place before dawn on May
17, was not immediately detected and the train plied its route in
full view of commuters, one of whom filmed it and posted a clip on
video-sharing site Youtube. – AFP
