Bar Council condemns police threats against lawyer

Malaysiakini
May 13, 11

The Malaysian Bar Council expressed its outrage today over the strong-arm tactics of police personnel who had threatened a lawyer, impeding her from performing her duties.

“Such blatant police harassment of lawyers is intolerable, and amounts to a reprehensible and inexcusable menace against the physical safety of the lawyer,” Bar president Lim Chee Wee said in a statement today.

He called on the Inspector-General of Police to put an immediate halt to repeated cases of lawyers being harassed and menaced by his personnel and to take stern action against officers guilty of such behaviour.

“Bullying tactics must not go unchecked,” Lim said.

He pointed out that interfering with an accused person’s right to speak to counsel in private is a breach of of section 28A of the Criminal Procedure Code, which provides an accused person the right to legal representation.

Lawyers are also de-facto officers of the court when they are acting for their clients, Lim said, and therefore interfering with their duties is an affront to the courts and the justice system.

All powerful uniform stumped

Last week, Lawyers for Liberty counsel Fadiah Nadwa Fikri said five policemen intruded into her meeting with a client at the Gombak district police headquarters in Selayang.

When she asked them to leave, one officer, standing near a window, pointed at her and said threateningly, “Jangan sampai jadi macam kes SPRM” (Don’t let this be like the MACC case).

The officer’s statement was presumably a reference to political aide Teoh Beng Hock and customs officer Ahmad Sarbani Mohamed who were fopund dead at Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) premises in Shah Alam and Kuala Lumpur.

Fadiah Nadwa said she then challenged the officer. “Do you want to throw me out of the window?” she asked him.

To this the police present kept quiet, but she related that they menacingly continued to disrupt her meeting with her client.

7 Replies to “Bar Council condemns police threats against lawyer”

  1. Corrupt leaderships cannot attract men of integrity; neither can they enact & foster laws to maintain high moral standards, performance & success in governments like those of Singapore.
    Malaysians have only one option now: A change of political leadership & ruling party.
    Prime Minister Najib, I challenge you & MACC to face up to these now. What are you doing about Taib Mahmud ? Respond now. A national leader hiding quietly behind all these media quakes & outcries We are waiting, waiting by the minute!
    Failing that, your people and the world has only one conclusion:
    You are continuing to condone & support outrageous lawlessness in your BN Gov’t. You & MACC are hiding wickedness & abomination, deceiving the public to support & keep BN & You in power – Nothing short of a crime against your own country, bordering on TREASON! If you were in another country, nothing would let you to go scot-free from impeachment. Alan Newman

  2. polis dan macc macam adik beradik.u jaga i, i jaga u. lepas tu, ada dua set undang undang. satu untuk kerabat aku dan satu lagi untuk bukan kerabat aku. ingat reporter sin chew jit poh yang kena tangkap bawah ISA? apa bezanya dengan editor utusan?

  3. But the IGP himself has integrity issues. It’s a hopeless situation until the UMNO government is kicked out for good. Then the police force can be revamped to regain public confidence and honor.

  4. Fire is a good servant but a bad master. When are we going to make the police and the MACC our servants. What has happened is that these two organisations love the ruling party more than they love the country.

    Questions of human right are a thorn in the flesh of these organizations. They hate these questions. They do not understand that sooner or later, they or their children will have to pay with their human rights because of present ignorance of human right issues. THESE FELLOWS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIGHTS OF ACCUSED PEOPLE. These fellows have a Banana-republic mentality. They sow the wind; they will reap the whirl-wind.

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