Swiss national Oliver Fricker, who flew home to Switzerland
after he was released from Changi Prison, was arrested by Swiss
police after he landed at Zurich Airport.
According to a Straits Times report, a Swiss police
spokesman said Fricker is suspected of having vandalised several
trains in Switzerland between 2002 and this year, causing damage of
about 200,000 Swiss francs ($260,000).
He added that the vandalism on the Swiss trains had some
similarities to that on the SMRT train which Fricker and an
accomplice spray-painted in May.
The report added that the SMRT train was scrawled with the words
‘McKoy Banos’ – the signature tag of two ‘graffiti artists’
believed to have spray-painted trains around the world.
“We have registered this ‘McKoy’ tag several times on Swiss
trains. We assume he was spray-painting with others. But we do not
know those suspects,” said the spokesman.
The Swiss police had been in contact with the Singapore
authorities, he added.
The Swiss police found that Fricker might be the man responsible
for the spate of train vandalism cases only after he was arrested
here in May.
Fricker is now being held in a prison in Zug and a judge is
expected to decide if he should be released pending trial.
Under Swiss law, the former software consultant faces between
one and five years in jail for vandalism.
The 32-year-old was released from prison on Monday morning after
he completed less than five months of his seven months jail.
He received one-third remission for good behaviour. He had
also been sentenced to three strokes of the cane for trespassing
and vandalising an SMRT train in May.
Fricker and an alleged accomplice, Briton Dane Alexander Lloyd,
29, had cut a hole in the Changi depot fence, and entered to
spray-paint the words “McKoy Banos” on a train. Lloyd is believed
to have fled to Hong Kong.
According to ST, Fricker left the Changi Prison Complex
at 8 am on Monday and was taken to the Immigration and Checkpoints
Authority building for repatriation procedures.
Fricker had been living in Singapore for the past 18 months,
before his arrest. He was caught two days before he was to return
to Switzerland.
The Swiss embassy told ST that a representative had
visited Fricker occasionally while he was imprisoned and gave him
consular assistance.
A spokesman for Switzerland-based company Comit, where Fricker
worked, said the IT consultant remains contracted, without further
elaboration.
- Yahoo! Singapore
