SINGAPORE, Oct 22 — Hardline social activist Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff, who gained Australian citizenship in 2011 but lied to Singapore authorities in 2013 that he did not have dual citizenship, was sentenced to six weeks’ jail today.
Zulfikar, who fled with his family to Australia in 2002, managed to get a valid Singapore passport after lying to authorities. He entered Singapore 15 times till he was caught in 2016 when he returned to the Republic to celebrate Hari Raya Puasa with his family.
The 49-year-old pleaded guilty in a district court to flouting the Passports Act by making a false statement in an online application for a Singapore passport on Dec 11, 2013.
The Ministry of Home Affairs said previously that he renounced his Singapore citizenship and ceased to be a Singapore citizen as of Aug 26 this year.
The court heard that in 2011, he applied for Australian citizenship with his oldest son, then aged 15, so that the boy could renounce his Singapore citizenship and evade his National Service liabilities.
Zulfikar took no steps to renounce his own Singapore citizenship despite knowing dual citizenship was illegal here.
He would first leave Australia on his Australian passport and then enter Singapore through Malaysia using his Singapore passport to avoid arousing suspicion.
His lawyer, Lock Zhi Yong from Eugene Thuraisingam LLP, said in mitigation that his client has been detained for more than four years and that his family was struggling to cope with his absence.
He has six children aged between 10 and 24 who live in Australia. One of them has to seek professional psychological help, Lock added.
Who is Zulfikar?
Zulfikar is known to be a hardline social activist with contentious views and was radicalised as early as 2001, after reading jihadi-related material.
According to past statements by the MHA, he has been supportive of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), and advocated Muslims taking up arms in Afghanistan after the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
TODAY previously reported that he once described Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden as a better Muslim than some of Singapore’s Malay leaders. He also suggested that JI plotters, who planned to bomb specific targets in the Republic, were motivated by the presence of the United States military in Singapore.
Zulfikar was arrested in Singapore on July 1, 2016 under the Internal Security Act for terrorism-related activities. The events that led to his arrest are unclear.
Referring to Zulfikar’s arrest in a Facebook post on July 29 that year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Zulfikar had aimed to provoke Muslims here to push for an Islamic state to replace Singapore’s democratic system.
As Zulfikar wanted to push his extremist agenda in Singapore, the MHA said then that he actively looked into holding training programmes aimed at radicalising young Singaporeans.
He also set up an online group in 2013 to counter Western media and used Facebook as a platform to agitate on Muslim issues in Singapore. — TODAY
