Published on: Thursday, March 21, 2013 |
The eight men who were arrested were charged under the Penal Code with terrorism related offences. The charges were read to them in the Bajau and Suluk languages at a makeshift court at the District Police headquarters here.
Deputy public prosecutor Mohd Dusuki Mokhtar led the prosecuting team. Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail is also in Lahad Datu to supervise the prosecution.
The eight are the first to face charges after an estimated 200 members of a Filipino Muslim clan slipped into this coastal town last month and seized a village to highlight their long-dormant territorial claim.
Some of the surviving Filipinos are believed to have fled back while a few dozen are allegedly hiding on palm oil plantation land.
The eight were charged with waging war against the King and harbouring people who committed terrorist acts. The first offence carries a possible death penalty and the other imposes a maximum of life imprisonment on conviction.
The men, whose ages ranged from 17 to 66, did not enter a plea.
The eight suspects were later transferred under heavy escort to the Tawau High Court in three Black Marias, before being transferred to the lock-up at the district police headquarters.
Sessions Court President Amelati Parnell heard the application and it is understood that they would be transferred to the Kota Kinabalu High Court today.
In Manila, Abraham Idjirani, a spokesman for the Philippine Muslim clan, condemned the filing of terrorism-related charges against the Filipinos, saying Malaysian prosecutors have not fully disclosed the evidence used in the complaints against the suspects.
He said that he feared the rights of the Filipinos were being violated and that there was a lack of transparency in the handling of their cases.
"In the first place, these Filipinos, if indeed they were involved, were just defending their rights because Sabah belongs to the sultanate and the Filipino people and Malaysia is just the administrator," Idjirani said.
He asked Malaysian authorities to release the suspects and called on the Philippine government to provide them with legal and other help.
Malaysian and Philippine authorities had sought for weeks to end the siege peacefully by urging the clansmen to leave without facing charges.
But a fatal shooting of two policemen by the Filipinos on March 1 prompted Malaysia to launch airs and mortar attacks that drove the clansmen out of the remote coastal village.
Malaysia has detained more than 300 mostly Filipino suspects since on suspicion of having been informants for the clansmen and other offences, including unlawful possession of weapons and illegal entry into Sabah.
The clansmen's leaders in the Philippines say Sabah is rightfully theirs because the territory belonged to their royal sultanate for centuries before colonial rule.
Sabah has been part of Malaysia since 1963, and many Filipinos have come there in recent decades to escape poverty and a long-running Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines.
