ABSTRACT
Of late there has been a growing concern about the possibility of a ‘maritime spectacular’ by terrorists in Southeast Asian waters. Security experts, government officials and shipping companies are getting increasingly worried about the terrorists’ potential for a disastrous maritime terrorist incident, targeting the critical shipping lanes such as the Strait of Malacca and the Singapore Strait. There is much apprehension that terrorists could team up with pirates to hijack a commercial vessel or a cruise liner and use it as a floating bomb to ram against a maritime target to cause widespread death and destruction or sink a big ship in a choking point in the Strait of Malacca to disrupt global trade and commerce. The possibility of Al Qaeda and/or its associate groups smuggling a crude nuclear or radiological device into a hijacked ship or loading the same into a container and setting it off in a port city, shipping lane or waterway has also emerged as one of the possible doomsday scenarios.1
