ISA 101

Raja Petra was detained twice under the ISA. The first time was in April 2001 when he was held with a group of Reformasi supporters; he was released 52 days later.

The Star

THERE are three phases during an ISA detention.

Phase one covers the first two months and focuses on building discipline. During this period, the detainee is not allowed to watch TV or mix with other detainees.

After two months, the detainee “graduates” to phase two, which focuses on group activities such as religious classes, counselling, and building up inner resilience and spirituality.

This lasts for six months and during this time the detainee is allowed to mix with others in the camp.

Phase three is about skills training. This phase could go on indefinitely until the detainee is released.

Kamunting Detention Centre commandant Ramli Osman stresses that the detainees are not subjected to any punishment or abuse.

“They are merely being kept here to prevent them from carrying out activities that could jeopardise the country’s security.

“They have far greater freedom than prisoners.

“Our approach is humane. Our facility is to help and rehabilitate them,” he says.

Ramli denies that the camp would deliberately keep some detainees in solitary confinement.

Asked about blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin’s case, he says it is not true that the blogger was kept in solitary confinement, as he has claimed in his blog.

“When he was brought in, he came in alone and, as a newcomer, he was put under phase one, which means that for two months he was not allowed to mix with others,” Ramli says.

“But because he was in the dorm alone, he felt isolated and lonely and wrongly thought he was being kept in solitary confinement,” he explains.

Raja Petra was detained twice under the ISA. The first time was in April 2001 when he was held with a group of Reformasi supporters; he was released 52 days later.

His second detention was on Sept 10, 2008, when he was taken in for purportedly insulting Islam.

He was released on Nov 7, so he was still in phase one.

Ramli also refutes Hindraf legal adviser P. Uthayakumar’s claim that he was denied medical treatment, which endangered his life, the grounds used in his habeas corpus application earlier in the year seeking his release.

Ramli says it was Uthayakumar who refused medical help.

In one incident, he says, Uthayakumar told the guard in the middle of the night that he was in pain and insisted on seeing the prison director.

The officer-in-charge offered to send him to the in-house doctor or the government hospital but Uthayakumar refused to go, says Ramli.

“During the period he was detained, we made 18 appointments for him at the Taiping Hospital but he refused to go,” he adds.

Uthayakumar was released from detention on May 9. He will face a sedition trial on Sept 28.

Making Mas Selamat safe

THE most “famous” inmate at the Kamunting Detention Centre at the moment is Mas Selamat Kastari from the militant Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group’s Singapore chapter.

He had planned to bomb Changi airport and carry out other attacks on the city but was captured by the Singaporean authorities. In February last year, he thoroughly embarrassed them when he made a spectacular escape from a high security prison by climbing out through a toilet window and swimming across the Johor Straits.

He remained in hiding in Johor for more than a year before he was finally caught on April 1 by Malaysian authorities and sent to the Kamunting Detention Centre, where he has been incarcerated since June, after the 60-day interrogation period.

So far, it has not been made clear why he has not been sent back to Singapore. “We would also like to know why,” mutters a prison official in response to a question from a journalist during a media visit to Kamunting last month.

At the same press briefing, Prison deputy commissioner (Security) Thang Ah Yong says special measures are in place for Mas Selamat to prevent a repeat of the Singapore escape. (He also says no prisoner has ever escaped from Kamunting.)

“We have put him in a special area where his activities are constantly monitored, including a daily chronology of his movements. We also have hourly reports on him,” Thang says, adding that there are other measures taken “but we can’t disclose them”.

However, these do not include leg irons or handcuffs, assures camp commandant Ramli Osman.

Neither is Mas Selamat in solitary confinement, it seems – he is even allowed to borrow books from the library. In the three months that he has been at Kamunting, he has not had any visits from his family.