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(The Malaysian Insider) - What happens when two strong personalities collide? Sparks.
A day after blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin said that he would not follow a High Court order directing him to divulge sources of three allegedly defamatory articles against prominent lawyer Shafee Abdullah, he refused to be served a court order by the latter. The episode took place at the magistrates' court here. The blogger was in court to hear an application to transfer a criminal defamation case against him to the Sessions Court. Seeing Raja Petra, Shafee walked up to him and said: "I am going to serve you.'' The blogger shot back: "This is a court and this is a contempt.'' The New Straits Times reported that the lawyer replied: "Alright, you are served in court.'' The blogger, better known as RPK, confirmed that Shafee had tried to serve him with a court order. "He threw the file onto the floor. I don't know what happened to the file after that. I walked off. The file just disappeared," he told The Malaysian Insider. He said that the matter did not end there, accusing Shafee of 'kurang ajar' for taking photographs of him in the court room. "That must be because he is a Mamak and not Malay so he does not know proper Malay protocol," said Raja Petra. "Malays do not take photographs of others without permission." On Wednesday, the lawyer sought and obtained an order from Justice Datuk Tee Ah Sing against Raja Petra in relation to three reports he posed on his Malaysia Today website. The report alleged that Shafee was the mastermind behind the sodomy allegations against Opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim. The High Court ordered Raja Petra to remove the offending articles by Friday and directed him to divulge the sources of the three reports and the identities of the readers who posted comments on the three articles. Lawyers said that it was rare for a court order to be served in this manner with some saying that there was a common law rule against serving orders in court. But they speculated that the move was probably aimed at showing that Shafee would not be cowed or intimidated by the blogger, and intended to play hardball on this case.
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