Mas Selamat Kastari

Claim to Notoriety: Mas Selamat was already Singapore's most wanted terrorist when he escaped from Singaporan prison on February 27, 2008, putting his name—if not his whereabouts—into renewed circulation.

Background: Mas Selamat, born in 1961, is a Singaporan national who was born and raised in Indonesia. (Singapore is a highly developed city-state that lies among the collections of islands between China and Australia. It is a relatively short boat ride away from Indonesia's main islands.) He joined Jemaah Islamiyah in the early 1990s. The Southeast Asian group is dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic state in Southeast Asia that would encompass Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.

He received military training in Afghanistan and in 1999 was selected for a leadership role in Jemaah Islamiyah. At the time of his flight in 2008, Mas Selamat was understood to be the leader of its Singaporan branch. According to Sidney Jones, an Asia program Senior Advisor for the International Crisis Group, Singapore and mainland Malaysia comprise one of Jemaah Islamiyya's four mantiqi, or regional groups, and is dedicated to fundraising.

Mas Selamat fled Singapore for Indonesia in 2001, after Singaporan authorities raised suspicion that he was behind a plan that would involve seven truck bombings there. He has also been thought responsible for a plan to crash a hijacked plane into Singapore's Changi airport. was arrested and jailed in Indonesia in from 2003-04 for immigration violations, then nabbed again in 2006 under the Internal Security Act, a Singaporan law that permits detention without trial.

Read more about: Jemaah Islamiyah

Notable Attacks: To date, Mas Kastari has not been directly linked to any terrorist attacks. However, he was among many arrested in the summer of 2003, following the devastating attack by JI on a hotel in Bali.

Read more about: the 2002 Bali bombing

Where He Is Now: The fugitive's whereabouts were unknown as of March 10, 2008, but he was suspected to be in Singapore.