‘Military intelligence officers tortured me’
“They used a golf stick and something long like a cricket bat. The reason is that when you hit me with a helmet (on), there’s no mark. You can’t find any mark, but the pain is internal pain.” And because of the physical abuse, Tharmendran said he suffered severe pain in his neck and shoulders and was barely move his left arm for a few days after the interrogation ended.
Din Merican
EXCLUSIVE A solitary bulb hangs from the ceiling, barely lighting the blackened walls of the cell that trap him like a rat. In the tiny, windowless room, he battles madness from within and relentless chill from without.
He has lost all sense of time, of how long he has been left to freeze in this hole, how long he has gone without sleep. A loud rap or a kick against the door ensures he is kept on the brink of consciousness and reason. Ironically, he holds on to his fragile sanity by virtue of the physical pain visited upon him by the man whom, to the victim, has come to embody fear itself.
Fear runs down his spine with every blood-curdling scream he hears from beyond his confines, every sickening thud that echoes through the walls. It’s only a matter of time before ‘he’ comes back for more
A year has passed, but N Tharmendran, 42, can vividly recount every detail of the internal military investigation that he claims he was subjected to, as if it was just yesterday.
Tharmendran, a former RMAF sergeant who has been charged over the theft of two jet-fighter engines, claimed he was detained and tortured by military intelligence for three weeks in connection with the case.
Tharmendran alleged that the favourite method of his interrogators – allegedly led by a major and his assistant, also a major – was to make him wear a crash helmet and repeatedly hit him as hard as possible.
“They used a golf stick and something long like a cricket bat. The reason is that when you hit me with a helmet (on), there’s no mark. You can’t find any mark, but the pain is internal pain,” he told Malaysiakini.
“That’s what Major (name withheld) told me. (He said) ‘I can hit you how hard I want, but there won’t be any mark. Even (if) you go to the doctor he will say you only have (a) headache’.’”
And because of the physical abuse, Tharmendran said he suffered severe pain in his neck and shoulders and was barely move his left arm for a few days after the interrogation ended.
He also claimed that he was repeatedly stripped to his underwear, made to stand on a block of ice for up to an hour at a time, and threatened with death.
“I was told by this major, he has friends in the UTK (special forces) and KDN (Home Ministry) and it won’t take him much time to get some men to shoot and kill me.”
“Another thing he said was that nobody would believe me (if I report the torture), because he is the IO (investigating officer) and he has the authority. He said that, even if I go to the hospital and say I was being tortured by these people, he said nobody would believe me.”
Tharmendan said he was not allowed to contact anyone to inform them of his whereabouts during the three weeks of his detention. His father N Nagarajah filed a police report last month to report Tharmendran’s alleged torture while under military detention.
