A Singaporean man, Loo Peng Seng (in the picture above), has been charged with sending bomb threats to two Taiwanese politicians through Facebook Messenger.
The 53-year-old was handed four charges of communicating false information about a harmful object on March 26. The threats were allegedly directed towards Mr. Lo Chih-chiang and Mr. Han Kuo-yu, Taiwan’s Kuomintang party members. Loo reportedly sent four messages to them over three days in 2024, containing references to the presence of a bomb that he knew to be false.
In one message to Mr. Lo on February 28, Loo supposedly stated, “I will go to use the bombs to blow you up to pieces.” Another message sent on March 1 to Mr. Lo threatened to bomb his home and the Legislative Yuan building, which houses Taiwan’s legislative branch.
Similar threatening messages were sent to Mr. Han, including a mention of putting bombs in his car or home and targeting his family members with car bombs. The police were alerted, leading to Loo’s arrest on March 4.
An investigation was initiated after a member of the public saw a Facebook post by an overseas public figure claiming to have received bomb threats from someone purportedly from Singapore. Following the report, officers from the Bedok Police Division swiftly identified and arrested Loo within 12 hours.
Loo was remanded at the Institute of Mental Health for a medical examination and is scheduled to appear in court on April 9. For each charge he faces, Loo could be imprisoned for up to seven years, fined up to $50,000, or both.
This incident reflects a previous case where a 30-year-old Australian man was sentenced to six months in jail for a fake bomb threat that forced a Scoot flight to return to Singapore. It happened just months after a series of bomb threats in August 2023 at 18 locations in Singapore, including the Environment Building that houses the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment and other government agencies. The police found no items of security concern at any of the locations.
