Bersih protester 'forced' to sign confession

A Bersih 3.0 protester has claimed that he was assaulted while in police custody in order to extract a confession.

This was after Mohd Safuan Mamat had surrendered to assist police investigations in relation to the April 28 protest at about 8am on Monday at the Dang Wangi police district headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, according to his police report lodged the following day.

His lawyer, Fadiah Nadwa Fikri (left), who accompanied him to lodge the police report at the Petaling Jaya police district headquarters yesterday, said he went to Dang Wangi immediately after he was informed by his friends that he was sought by the police.

After his statement was taken, which took "all morning", he claimed that he was brought to the lock-up where a plainclothes police officer threatened, "If you don't confess, you will be beaten in the lock-up", before he was handcuffed.

"While in the lock-up, a uniformed police officer holding a black pipe said to me, ‘So you're a Bersih person?' before kicking me. I fell and was ordered to get up and sit on a chair," he said in his police report.

The 25-year-old technician alleged that he was then told to confess that he had hit a police car with a traffic cone, and was beaten in the face and shoulder with the pipe when he denied having did so.

He said he was then taken away by another police officer, who ordered him to change into a lock-up uniform before being taken into a cell.

"The officer escorting me told another detainee, ‘He is a Bersih gangster,' and he slapped my face four times while the officer just watched without doing anything," claimed Mohd Safuan.

When contacted yesterday, Fadiah told Malaysiakini that her client's beatings lasted between 20 to 30 minutes, and he would be able to identify the police officers involved if there was an identification parade.

Document signed under duress

Mohd Safuan also wrote in his report that he was again harassed by police officers while waiting to be charged at the Kuala Lumpur court complex yesterday afternoon, and was forced to confess and had signed a document under duress.

"They wrote something on a piece of paper and they asked him to sign. He didn't know what the police wrote on the paper, he just signed," said Fadiah, who is also the coordinator for Lawyers for Liberty (LFL).

She said he was charged under Section 440 of the Penal Code for allegedly attacking the patrol car, and Section 174 for "non-attendance in obedience to an order from a public servant."

Expressing bewilderment at the latter charge, Fadiah said, "He surrendered himself on (Monday) morning, so I have no idea why he was being charged under Section 174."

She added by right he should have been released after giving his statement and charged later if necessary.

"We are very worried about the remaining 100 or so people who are being hunted down by the police," she continued.

Mohd Safuan (right) pleaded not guilty to both charges and was released on RM1,500 bail, after which he complained to the LFL and lodged the police report.

Besides Fadiah herself, LFL lawyer Afiq M Noor, and Bersih steering committee members Maria Chin Abdullah and Mandeep Singh accompanied Mohd Safuan to lodge the report.