Safe to come home, Nazri tells RPK
SHAH ALAM, Oct 4 — Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz today assured Malaysia-Today blogger Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin that he would be safe if he returned to Malaysia.
“Malaysia is not a ‘banana republic’ in that it could not give safety assurance towards a witness of a case. I would prefer if Raja Petra comes back to Malaysia and faces the charges against him, and plays the game, according to the rules,” he said.
Nazri said it was up to the public to judge whether what Raja Petra wrote was true or otherwise, but felt that the fugitive blogger should not make things more difficult for the authorities to act on things.
“There is some good to it (Raja Petra’s blog postings) because at least, the MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) can act on it if it’s true.
“But, if you do things this way, people will get confused and it will make it difficult for the MACC to do its work,” he noted.
Raja Petra was arrested on September 12, 2008 as he was deemed a threat to national security and was ordered to be detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) on September 22, 2008.
On November 7, 2008, the Shah Alam High Court ordered the release of Raja Petra after ruling that his two-year detention at the Kamunting detention camp in Taiping was unlawful. — Bernama
