I took some interesting notes.
From Jeff: Nat was arrested but they were not sure of what code to charge him under. Therefore, and this is a darkly funny phrase, it was a "flippant arrest". Also from Jeff: Bloggers are warned that from now on until the next general election, there may be "planted commenters" leaving comments on blogs which may land blog owners in trouble.
Nat's account of what happened in jail. When Nat was following the police out, he received a call from his lawyer to refuse going with them. When he did, the police just said "tangkap sajalah" and handcuffed him, and that's how he was whisked away. He was brought back home where they ransacked his place and took his PCs, his monitor (wahahahaha) and some papers. Nat noted that they could have planted anything in his room if they wanted. (I've heard elsewhere that it's the oldest trick in the book)
As had been described in Eli's blog before (here and here), there had been attempts to thwart Nat's lawyers in appearing beside him in court. Nat was also questioned over and over and over again over same questions - in Nat's words: "different officers, same questionnaire" (yes, and some innocent pedestrian outside the lockup was probably being mugged while the officers sat inside asking questions like "siapa nama kau" and "umur berapa" over and over and over again. Lack of resources my foot lah.) in attempt to break (or frame?) him.
Why (was Nat arrested)? Ah this is interesting. Nat and his other conspiracy theorists have come up with three probable reasons on why he had to spend four days in lockup and, upon release, endure his new nickname as "Ikan Bilis".
First scenario: it may be due to the "complete ineptitude" of the police, more so the Cyber Crimes Unit. According to Nat, these people have no idea what blogs are. Go figure.
Second scenario: it may be due to the fact that Nat's affiliated with opposition politics. Hmmm...
Third scenario, a.k.a. Juicy Dirty Conspiracy Theory That Sounds Kinda Plausible: Nat's being the
OK. Enough with analogies.
What I mean is, what could have happened, according to Nat's theory, was that he may have been
a) used to blow up the doctored photo, like what I had mentioned before. Keeping Najib's (did he? did he not?) involvement in Altantuya's case a huge question mark imprinted in the rakyat's minds. Even a simple layperson like me could see that, so that's no big conspiracy theory.
b) the pawn to remind us all, that there may be something to the reports of Dep. Internal Security Minister Johari Baharum being corrupt. He had just recently been cleared of his allegations. Or else why under the Official Secrets Act? Doesn't that add credibility to the reports that were refuted previously? Incidentally there is bad blood between Johari and the Inspector-General of Police, Musa Hassan. Ooooohh...
c) both of the above.
And you wonder why they called him the Ikan Bilis.
I don't remember if Nat mentioned that it may be an attempt to scare bloggers. Did he?
Not anyone is as lucky as Nat to have had his network of NGO activists, opposition leaders and bloggers behind him. Tony had presented a case of a man named Tung Ket Ming (I hope I spelt his name correctly), whose face due to my total lack of ability to recognize faces, is etched to my memory as a blank face with a huge black patch on where his right eye is.
Mr. Tung was charged for armed robbery, but refused to plead guilty. To force him to plead guilty he was beat up, SEVERAL times in SEVERAL police stations. He was punched, kungfu-kicked, hose(Not typo. A hose was used.)-whipped, and finally relented to sign a statement which he did not understand (due to illiteracy), admitting to committing armed robbery. Was Mr. Tung guilty? We will never know, but the records say that he is.
[Edit some minutes later: Malaysiakini has the report on Mr. Tung. They spelt his surname as "Tong", but I distinctively remember "Tung" on Tony's slides.]
Friends who went to the forum, please point out if there are any errors in what I've recorded above. After all I was taking notes with an extremely full bladder.
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Wow I can't believe I have blabbed this much. Anyway this is for the benefit of those who didn't make it to the forum, and also for my own documentation purposes.
Oh, and a tip from Haris Ibrahim, a human rights lawyer: empower yourselves with the little red book (download from The Malaysian Bar: full version (incl. all languages: BM BI BC BT), versi Bahasa Malaysia, English version or 中文版), which teaches you your rights when confronted with the police. Also, Haris mentioned that if faced with the worst case scenario ("tangkap sajalah"), it is worth being charged under obstruction of police and wait till one's legal counsel arrives. Food for thought.
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[Another Edit: After writing the whole piece only I remembered that Nat had written a statement on his arrest. In English and BM somemore. Read it here.]
