|
The dismissal of charges against a prominent blogger fuels speculation over why and how Asia Sentinel
The decision Friday by High Court Justice Syed Ahmad Helmy Syed Ahmad to free the Raja Petra Kamarudin, the editor of the internet publication Malaysia Today, has kicked off an intense round of speculation in Malaysia that the courts might be breaking loose from the thrall of the United Malays National Organisation, the country’s biggest ethnic political party. Raja Petra was ordered jailed on a plethora of charges in September, mainly for writing a series of scathing if not scabrous editorials and articles that sought to link Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to the 2006 execution murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu, then 28, the jilted lover of Najib’s best friend, Abdul Razak Baginda. Abdul Razak and two of Najib’s bodyguards were arrested and subjected to one of the longest trials in Malaysian history before Abdul Razak was freed last week. The decision to free Abdul Razak spurred widespread controversy from critics who argued that the well-connected think-tank director’s acquittal was engineered because of his friendship with Najib. One of the articles that got Raja Petra into trouble, among many, was his printing a private investigator’s allegations that Najib had been the woman’s lover and had passed her on to Abdul Razak. The bodyguards remain in jail and have been ordered to put on a defense, raising questions over why they would kill a woman they didn’t know without being ordered to do so. In additional to being subject to charges of criminal defamation, Raja Petra was also charged with sedition and ultimately was given two years in prison for violating the country’s notorious Internal Security Act, which allows for what amounts to indefinite imprisonment without trial or habeas corpus. He was charged with publishing articles and readers’ comments critical of Islam and an insult to Muslims as well as publishing allegedly defamatory or false articles about Malaysia’s leaders “with the intention of undermining public confidence and inciting hatred against the government; the articles are alleged to be a threat to national security.” READ MORE HERE
 |
The Blogs 
