DAP to file complaint over status of probe

Source: Sun2Surf. Article's URL: http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=37779

By: Hemananthani Sivanandam and Eva Yeong (Mon, 07 Sep 2009)

PETALING JAYA (Sept 7, 2009): DAP Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng will file a complaint against the police with the public prosecutor for failing to reveal the status of an investigation pertaining to the detention of Ooi Leng Hang for allegedly having leaflets that contained seditious content regarding the Perak state assembly fiasco. According to Lim, several non-uniformed officers raided the party’s headquarters in Taman Paramount on May 23 and confiscated items such as a computer, keyboard, portable hard disk, monitor, 19 CDs and headphones. The computer and other items were used by Ooi, the party’s election bureau executive director, who was arrested on May 21 and accompanied the officers during the raid. The headquarters' IT manager, Goh Kheng Teong, who was present, lodged a police report at the Sea Park police station. Ooi was released four days later on police bail but has not been charged.

At a press conference today, Lim said he wrote a letter to Selangor police chief Deputy Commissioner Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar three weeks ago on the status of the investigation and asked for the items to be returned. “I received a reply from the department head of the Selangor commercial crime division on Sept 4 (Friday) and it stated that they were unable to fulfil our request for the items to be returned," he said. “This is because the items were still needed for the investigation, and it was also at the discretion of the deputy public prosecutor’s office to return the items. Lim said section 107A (3) (b) of the Criminal Precedure Code (Revised 1999) Act states that after a police report is lodged and a request for the police investigations status is made, the police have to tell the complainant the status of the investigation within four weeks, failing which the complainant has the right make a report to the public prosecutor. “So we will make the report to the public prosecutor by tomorrow (Tuesday) on behalf of Goh," he said. "We are in the dark as to his alleged crime and we are puzzled over the delay of the investigation."

Ooi, who was present at the press conferece, said he was only questioned for 30 minutes during his In his police report, Goh said "about 11" non-uniformed men claiming to be police officers went to the party’s headquarters at 6.25pm on May 23 with Ooi. “When I asked them for a warrant, they said a warrant was not needed for the raid,” Goh said. He immediately called the party’s leaders, including Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo, Lim and Bukit Bintang MP Fong Kui Loon, who arrived 30 minutes later.
Lim said he and the other MPs questioned the officers and were satisfied with their explanation. He said the police wanted to find out who designed the leaflets possessed by Ooi when he was arrested. “We didn’t want to be seen as hindering the police from carrying out their investigation," he said. “But now I think we made a wrong decision because it has been almost four months and they have not provided us with any details of the investigation nor returned the items confiscated."