Clare Rewcastle Brown pays tribute to the Kamarudin Brothers
Sarawak Report
Raja Idris Kamarudin, who is distantly related to the royal family of Selangor and holds a public position in the PAS state of Terengganu, is the brother of the infamous blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin (known as RPK), who has been the subject of multiple defamation complaints by numerous parties, including Sarawak Report.
RPK has made no secret about being paid to write pieces attacking the opponents of those who engage his services and during the run up to GE14 he made no secret either of acting as the ‘proxy’ of then prime minister Najib Razak.
It was therefore surprising to find that when Hadi Awang issued his writ in the London High Court he included as one of his prime witnesses none other than RPK, who has been widely condemned as an unreliable and patently untruthful character, who had already demonstrated an extreme bias against Sarawak Report. RPK was going to give evidence as to the harm Sarawak Report’s article had done to Hadi personally in England.
Indeed, Sarawak Report’s legal team soon had reason to issue a number of formal complaints to Carter Ruck pertaining to RPK publishing information known only to the parties and their advisors about the case – information that was being distorted in order to taunt and vilify the defendant.
Hadi never provided an answer as to how information had leaked to RPK by PAS and his legal team claimed that he was not in a position to restrain the libellous articles attacking Sarawak Report penned by the brother of his key agent in the litigation Raja Idris Kamarudin. London lawyers Carter Ruck asserted that the defendant’s complaints about ‘third party’ bloggers was “melodramatic”.
