PENANG,
Malaysia - Malaysian groups as well as a lawyer
representing several alleged Jemaah Islamiya (JI)
members have slammed a private television station's
screening of "confessions" by several suspected
Malaysian militants detained by Indonesian police,
saying they amounted to trial by media.
Last
Friday, the Malaysian station TV3 screened an
"interview" with four alleged JI members that was
recorded in Jakarta on March 11. TV3, though private, is
one of the most pro-government television stations in
Malaysia, and the interview was arranged with the help
of Malaysian and Indonesian police.
The four
suspects, Nasir Abas, Jaafar Anwarul, Samsul Bahari
Hussein and Amran Mansor, admitted in the interview that
they were JI members and had links to al-Qaeda. They
also said they were repentant over their involvement in
the group and no longer subscribed to its fanatical
ideologies.
But critics said the interview
amounted to trial by media and that the "confessions"
were flawed as they were not given in a free
environment.
The station's decision to televise
the "confessions" was sharply criticized by the Abolish
ISA Movement, a coalition of 82 civil-society groups
seeking to dissolve Malaysia's draconian Internal
Security Act (ISA). But some of the strongest remarks
came from Edmund Bon, the lawyer representing several
other alleged JI members now being held under the ISA,
which allows for detention without trial.
"Firstly, TV3 may have committed contempt of
court," Bon said. "The issues covered are sub
judice," meaning they are still under judicial
consideration. He also said 10 ISA detainees in
Malaysia, alleged to be JI members, had filed habeas
corpus applications in the Malaysian courts. Though
their appeals were dismissed recently by the Kuala
Lumpur High Court, their appeals to the Federal Court
are still pending.
Among the issues covered in
these applications are what the alleged terrorist
activities of JI are, and whether there is evidence that
JI even exists, Bon said. "It is my view that TV3's
program of the 'confessions' would tend to influence the
Federal Court to decide against the detainees," he
added.
Nasir is said to be the regional JI chief
in charge of Sabah, Labuan, North and Central Sulawesi,
and Mindanao. Arrested by Indonesian police last April,
he is alleged to have trained several top JI leaders in
military warfare. These include convicted Bali bombers
Ali Imron and Imam Samudera, and Saad Fathurrahman Al
Ghozi, the alleged mastermind of bombings in the
Philippines in 2000 that killed 22 people.
Nasir
is also alleged to have trained lecturers Dr Azahari
Husin, who is on the run, and Wan Min Wan Mat, detained
in Malaysia in October 2002, in guerrilla warfare.
Amran, from Johor, Malaysia, is alleged to have
been directly involved in the Christmas Eve church
bombings in Batam, Pekan Baru and Medan in 2000. He has
expressed regret over the deaths of innocent people and
asked for forgiveness from God and the victims'
families.
Nasir claimed there was a fatwa
(edict) that was passed on to them by Riduan Isamuddin
or Hambali, now in US custody, urging Muslims to defend
their religion and to attack Americans who had killed
many Muslims around the world.
Malaysian Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi said the televised confessions
proved that terrorists were a major threat in the
region. "I hope Malaysians will be able to understand
the reality of such a threat after the confessions," he
was reported as saying. Abdullah, who is also internal
security minister, is responsible for the detentions of
some 90 Malaysians under the ISA.
Most of these
are alleged militants are said to belong to the
Malaysian Militant Group (KMM) and JI. Many of them have
already spent more than two years in jail without trial
and have had their two-year detention orders extended by
another two years. The ISA allows detainees to be held
for an initial 60-day interrogation period, and, if they
are not released by the end of that period, they can
receive renewable two-year detention orders. Most
detainees are held in the Kamunting Detention Center in
Perak state, north of Kuala Lumpur.
In addition
to Abdullah's comments, Defense Minister Najib Razak
remarked that although the activities of JI had been
crippled, they "can still operate in smaller groups and
pose security problems".
Televised "confessions"
from detainees are not new in Malaysia. During the
communist insurgency, and up until the late 1970s,
detainees, including political activists, alleged to be
Communist Party members were made to confess on national
television and say they had realized the error of their
ways.
In the mid-1990s, Ashaari Mohamad, the
leader of al-Arqam, a banned "deviationist" Islamic sect
with a sizable following, "confessed" on television to
spreading deviant religious teachings after a spell in
detention.
Regarding the latest "confessions",
Bon has made several pertinent observations. "The
participants were under the supervision, direction and
rule of the police," he said. "There was no escaping. It
was a controlled environment."
He said the
questions posed were leading, as if the answers were
already known. "The answers forthcoming from the
participants appear to have been scripted and
rehearsed," he said. "They were not full, candid and
frank confessions."
Observers are wondering
about the timing of the "confessions" as well. "Why this
was done is unclear, but one can speculate that the
authorities are trying very hard now to justify their
allegations of JI terrorist activities and JI's
existence," said Bon. "The world knows that they could
not do it at the [Abu Bakar] Ba'asyir trial, and he,
being the supposed head of JI, is going to be released
in April 2004, whereas his poor purported 'followers' in
Indonesia, such as the participants and many others in
Kamunting [in Malaysia], will linger on in detention."
Even the government-appointed and nominally
independent Human Rights Commission of Malaysia has
spoken out against the confessions. Its commissioner,
Hamdan Adnan, questioned the ethics involved in showing
the program and said it amounted to trial by media. "I
hope this will not be a trend," he said. "Under what
circumstance were they made to confess?" he asked,
stressing that people should be regarded as innocent
until proven guilty in a court of law and that TV3
should not make a mockery of media ethics.
He
also warned that the confessions should not implicate
others, especially those detained in Malaysia under the
ISA for suspected involvement in the similar alleged
activities.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
