Human Rights Walk: Court allows reinstatement of suit

The Court of Appeal today unanimously allowed an appeal by five lawyers and an activist to reinstate their civil suit against the police over their alleged unlawful arrests for participating in the Human Rights Walk four year ago.

The three-member bench led by Justice Ramly Ali agreed that there were triable issues and the case should not have been struck out.

In ordering the case to go for trial at the Kuala Lumpur High Court, the judges ruled that this is an appropriate case for the appellants to be given their day in court.

“There are legal and factual issues that need to be decided for it to go for trial,” Ramly ruled.

“This is not a plain and obvious case for it to be struck out.”

Besides Justice Ramly, the other judges were Justice Jefferey Tan Kok Wha and Justice Zaharah Ibrahim.

The five lawyers who filed a civil suit in December 2010 are PKR Subang MP Sivarasa Rasiah, PKR vice-president N Surendran; PKR supreme council member Latheefa Beebi Koya, Eric Paulsen and Amer Hamzah Arshad. The sole activist who filed the suit is Johny Andu @ Abu Bakar Adnan.

All of them are represented by lawyers Edmund Bon and J Leela, while senior federal counsel Habibah Harun had earlier submitted on the matter.

The case was struck out by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on April 6, 2011.

The walk which took place on Dec 9, 2007, was to commemorate Human Rights Day which is celebrated on every Dec 10. The peaceful walk from Sogo to the Bar Council building in Jalan Leboh Pasar, resulted insome to be arrested before it ended.

Surendran, who was present in today's proceeding, welcomed the verdict, saying this is a vital case on human rights and the right to assemble which is protected under Article 10 of the federal constitution.

“In light of the Bersih crackdown, this case which stems in 2007 remains very significant,” he said.

The plaintiff had claimed “mala fide action and malicious prosecution” in their arrests which also resulted in charges being levelled upon them for illegal assembly.

Police named in the suit

They named the Che Hamzah Che Ismail, who was the OCPD of IPD Dang Wangi and the ground commander that day, the inspector-general of police, the Home Ministry and the government as defendants.

The suit was filed through the firm of Messrs Daim & Gamany at the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

Besides the arrest and detention, they were also kept overnight in the police lock-up and charged the next day at the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court on counts of unlawful assembly with intention to cause public nuisance, and an alternative charge for unlawful assembly.

Attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail, who was present in charging them four years ago, was alleged by the plaintiffs to have acted in bad faith in trying to object to their bail application on the grounds they had not adhered to a police warning.

After almost two years, the seven people who were charged were acquitted by Sessions judge SM Komathy Suppiah on April 16, 2009, without their defence being called.

The lawyers and activist are claiming that they were victims of malicious prosecution as the facts and circumstances of the case do not support the charge, and that the police had falsely and maliciously implicated them.