The man who tried to punch student activist Adam Adli could be a Kuala Lumpur traffic policeman, according to unconfirmed information received by this blog on Thursday. No further details were made available. Earlier this week, the attacker was reported to have identified himself as Ruslan Mokhtar according to online news site AntaraPos.

Yesterday, Adam Adli gave a statement to police about the report he made after the attack, which took place outside Bukit Aman federal police headquarters on Monday. He had gone to Bukit Aman to seek advice on intimidation and threats made against him following his action last Saturday in lowering a banner with the image of Umno president Najib Tun Razak, replacing it with a protest banner for five minutes.

Earlier this week, Adam had told the press: “I believe that he was a plain-clothes police officer as he was present in the meeting room in Bukit Aman. But when he attempted to punch me at the press conference, no one tried to stop him. There were other uniformed officers but I noticed that they didn’t take any action.”

The statement he made yesterday was in relation to the attack and not about the flag incident. Adam has been issued a show cause letter by ahthorities at Universiti Pengajian Sultan Idris for allegedly having tarnished the institution’s good name, Bernama reports.

- uppercaise