By TEH ENG HOCK
enghock@thestar.com.my
PETALING JAYA May 26, 2010: The Govern-ment cannot bring fugitive blogger Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin to trial in Britain even if it wanted to.Bar Council vice-president Lim Chee Wee said Malaysia would have to bring Raja Petra back to prosecute him.
“Essentially, it can’t be done,” he said when asked about Raja Petra’s challenge to the Malaysian Government to try him in Britain.
“You have to bring him back to prosecute him. To do that, you have to check if there is an extradition treaty with Britain.
“And if there is, it depends whether UK gives consent. One factor is whether he can get a fair trial in Malaysia,” said Lim.
It was reported on Monday that an online news portal had written that Raja Petra said he would seek a level playing field in his fight against charges of defamation and sedition as well as his appeal against his detention under the Internal Security Act.
Raja Petra refuted the notion that he should return home to defend himself at a Malaysian court, adding that it was the prosecution’s job to prove guilt.
He has two warrants of arrest issued against him for not attending up for his sedition trial in April and May last year.
Another lawyer, Norman Fernandez concurred with Lim that Raja Petra cannot be tried in Britain. “There is no provision to try him in UK. He is not a war criminal.
“And if he is tried there, and found guilty, can he serve his sentence in a UK prison?” he said.
Fernandez said Raja Petra was merely taunting the Malaysian authorities after he managed to slip out of the country.
“He’s thumbing his nose at the Malaysian authorities and saying ‘Catch me if you can’. He knows it is not easy to bring him back to Malaysia,” he said.
Fernandez said nobody knew Raja Petra’s residential status in Britain.
“If he is a visitor, then his term of stay in the country is limited. He could have entered Britain through special documents. Or as a refugee.
“We don’t know, and the British authorities have yet to shed light on this,” he said.
Former Selangor PKR Youth chief Hamidzun Khairuddin, who joined Umno in 2004, called Raja Petra a traitor to Malaysians.
Raja Petra challenges Govt to bring him to trial in London
PETALING JAYA May 25, 2010: Fugitive blogger Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin has turned up in London and threw a challenge to the Malaysian Government to bring him to trial in the United Kingdom.
An online news portal reported that the writer had said that he would seek a level playing field in his fight against charges of defamation and sedition as well as his appeal against his detention under the Internal Security Act.
“I will take on the Government and I will fight them but I will do what Sun Tzu said, ‘Fight him in your territory.’
“So my territory is here in the UK,” he said in a speech in a hall in Holborn in London on Saturday.
The talk was reportedly organised by the Solicitors International Human Rights Group.
Raja Petra refuted the notion that he should return home to defend himself at a Malaysian court, adding that it’s the prosecution’s job to prove guilt.
He also said that Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who is facing a sodomy charge, was in a different situation.
“Anwar has accepted the fact that he has to stay (in Malaysia) as he aspires to be the next prime minister. I have no political aspirations.
“I’ll probably be a free man longer than Anwar,” the Malaysian Insider news portal quoted him as saying.
In April, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said that the police were investigating how Raja Petra had used other channels to go overseas without any trace of immigration records when he left the country.
Raja Petra, who has two warrants of arrest issued against him for not turning up for his sedition trial in April and May last year — had possibly escaped to Thailand via Langkawi
By ZULKIFLI ABD RAHMAN
newsdesk@thestar.com.my
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