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| ABOUT KARPAL SINGH |
On January 14, 2000, Mr. Singh was arrested on a charge under Malaysia's Sedition Act.
The sedition charge against Mr. Singh was unprecedented in that it was based on words alleged to have been spoken by Mr. Singh in court while conducting the defence of his client, Anwar
Ibrahim, former Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia on charges of sodomy. If convicted, Mr. Singh could have received a jail sentence of up to three years. During the trial Mr. Ibrahim was noted to be losing weight and hair. Defence counsel obtained a urine sample from Mr. Ibrahim and sent it, under a pseudonym, to the Gribbles Pathological Laboratory in Australia. The pathologist's report indicated a level of arsenic in Mr. Anwar's creatine was 230
ug/g. A normal reading would have been below 17 ug/g.
The sedition charge is based on the allegation that Karpal Singh, on September 10th 1999, while in court representing
Ibrahim, expressed the concern that somebody might be trying to murder his client. At the time, trial judge Justice Arifin
Jaka, Karpal Singh and lead prosecutor Attorney General Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah were discussing a report that seemed to indicate that
Ibrahim, who had been in custody for over a year, was suffering from arsenic poisoning. Karpal Singh was calling for an inquiry into his client's in-custody treatment; the Attorney General, as lead prosecutor, was disavowing the need for an inquiry and suggesting Anwar Ibrahim had perhaps been poisoned, not by people in high places, but by supporters.
In court, on September 10 1999, Mr. Singh produced the report to the trial judge, Arifin Jaka J., and commented:
"It could well be that someone out there wants to get rid of him ... even to the extent of murder...I suspect people in high places are responsible for this situation."
Those words were said by Mr. Singh in the course of calling for the hospitalization of Mr. Ibrahim and an inquiry as to how he came to be poisoned while in custody.
One year earlier Mr. Singh's client had been severely beaten while in custody by a 'person in a very high place', the Malaysian Chief of Police, Abdul Rahim
Noor. A Royal Commission of Inquiry concluded that the Malaysian Chief of Police Abdul Rahim Noor had delivered potentially lethal blows to Anwar while he was in custody, bound and blindfolded.
As a result of his open court remarks, Karpal Singh was been charged as follows:
That you on 10th September 1999 at about 9:10 a.m. in the High Court Kuala Lumpur in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur in the trial of Public Prosecutor v.
Dato' Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim (WPPJ45-51-95) and Public Prosecutor v. Sukma Darmawan Sasmitaat Madja (WWPJ45-26-99) during the course of your submissions over the issue in relation to allegations of arsenic poisoning of
Dato' Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim did utter the following seditious words, namely,
"It could well be that someone out there wants to get rid of him...even to the extent of murder. I suspect people in high places are responsible for the situation."
and you have thereby committed an offence under section 4(1)(b) of the Sedition Act, 1948 (act 15) punishable under section 4(1) of the same Act."
This was the only known charge of sedition ever in the Commonwealth brought against a lawyer for remarks made in open court in the defence of a client.
Background
Karpal Singh has been a prominent advocate of human rights in Malaysia for over 30 years. He is the Deputy Chairman of the opposition Democratic Action Party and was a Member of Parliament for the State of Penang from 1978 to November l999. Prior to that, Mr. Singh was a State Assemblyman for the State of Kedah from l974 to l978.
In 1987 Amnesty International declared Mr. Singh a prisoner of conscience when, during the October l987 'Operation
Lalang,' he was arrested under the Internal Security Act and imprisoned until January l989 without charge or trial. Mr. Singh was released by order of the court in March l988 in response to a habeas corpus application, but was re-arrested by the police hours later.
Karpal Singh is a leading opponent of the death penalty in Malaysia.
The Malaysian Bar Council convened an emergency meeting to discuss the prosecution of Mr. Singh and its loss of confidence in the judiciary. In November 1999, the Malaysian Government, in Civil Case No. S2-23-93-1999, sought an injunction to prevent the Malaysian Bar Council from meeting to have that discussion on the grounds that anyone participating in the discussion would be committing sedition. On November 19, 1999, Justice Dr. Kamalanthan Ratnam granted the injunction sought by the Attorney General.
Amnesty International has declared Anwar Ibrahim to be a prisoner of conscience whose prosecution was politically motivated.
Campaign Results
On January 14 2002, after much argument about the status of both Malaysian and foreign observers, Malaysia's new Attorney General Datuk Gani Patail (previously the lead prosecutor in PP v. Anwar
Ibrahim) announced that the sedition charge was being withdrawn.
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