00:10hello and good evening i'm melissa idris welcome to consider this this is the show where we want
00:16you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day at least three minors were
00:21recently arrested under the security offenses special measures act or sosma as many of you are
00:27aware sosma is that controversial procedural law which allows for detention without judicial oversight
00:34for up to 28 days which is why the use of sosma against children in this recent case has raised
00:42serious concerns joining me on the show to discuss his father is criminal lawyer shashi devin who is
00:48one of the directors of suara raya malaysia swaram shashi thank you so much for being on the show
00:53with me today can you um what what can you tell us about the case the the how and the
01:00why um behind
01:02why these miners were arrested under sosma sure certainly good doing melissa thank you for having
01:09me uh uh here now the case involved three miners uh aged uh between 16 and 17 and they were
01:18all three of
01:18them were arrested on february the 15th and detained under sosma for 26 days only to be released two
01:26days shy of the 28-day detention period now of course this 28-day detention period is without judicial
01:34oversight uh and it's a procedural law now for the two cases that swaram managed uh to get hold of
01:43family
01:44members uh they were taken at their homes uh during a raid at dawn so these were what we uh
01:52commonly
01:52refer to as the dawn raids right so and they actually conducted these dawn raids on at least two out
01:59of
01:59three uh children that we know of now they were held in solitary confinement in rooms that were uh lit
02:0824 7. now uh we've also been made to understand in the course of our interviews with the family and
02:15the
02:15children that family contact was extremely limited and only one or two monitored phone calls were allowed
02:22um the children's families were allowed were permitted to see the children only once throughout the
02:29detention period only once and that too i must say towards the end of the 26-day the uh detention
02:36that
02:36they had to go through now with regards to right to counsel the children's right to counsel was
02:42restricted these miners were uh sort of uh told to sign forms and uh if they did not sign these
02:51forms they
02:52would be denied access to to counsel now under the law under sosma provisions the they can deny counsel or
03:01access to counsel for the first 48 hours they can do that however in this in the case involving at
03:09least
03:09two out of the three miners they were we were only granted access four days after we sent in the
03:16request
03:17to visit uh uh the the children four days so it wasn't even immediate and and melissa we must make
03:25this
03:26clear swakam found out um at least a good two weeks uh in and then when when swaram found out
03:35we immediately
03:36wrote in which means we have we are already on uh day 20 plus and we were granted access four
03:44days after
03:44and after we were granted access several days later they were we were informed we were expecting a charge but
03:50they were released instead shall she help me understand so sosma if i understand correctly is
03:57intended for very serious national security threats how are children considered a national security threat
04:06what threshold did this case meet that threshold um okay so i i am unable to answer your question because
04:16the practices and procedures laid down in sosma can effectively keep us out of the look we do not
04:24know what was what actually transpired because we we don't have um sharing of this information between
04:32the pdrm and the lawyer and council and during the interview that i personally conducted of course
04:39uh farida conducted interview for her her her client for the uh child that i interviewed all i was informed
04:48is that he was um part of a whatsapp group and that uh he had a laptop and mobile phone
04:59that was confiscated
05:00from him now apart from that everything else that he found out he found out during the investigation
05:05and he was told that this was happening or you are involved in this and and and that so what
05:12is the
05:12this and that is something that i'm going to tell you now the inspector general of police the igp had
05:18framed or claimed that these miners were an active extremist cell active extremist cell uh labeling one of
05:27them one of the three as a mastermind behind alleged uh alleged plots to attack certain locations in
05:33Malaysia so this is what um the igp has come out to say now in the course of investigation that
05:41is not
05:41what we discovered or that is not what we were informed by the children they they were where at least
05:47two of them were privy to some of the conversation but certainly they did not uh with us they did
05:54not
05:54allude uh or confess to any form of conversation regarding um in involvement in uh terrorism related
06:07shashi is there anything in sasma in the procedural law that explicitly addresses or accommodates when
06:16miners are uh arrested or detained under this law i'm just wondering what concerns there are when a law like
06:24sosma is applied to children okay so so um section 13 of sosma is a provision that allows for bail
06:33now
06:34what or or well it's a provision that allows for bail but the general rule is that bail shall not
06:40be
06:41granted to anyone who's arrested investigated and charged uh for an offense uh using sosma procedures
06:48however there is an exception and one of the exception and this is where the miners mentioned
06:54it's under section 13 subsection 2 where it says that a person below the age of 18 years may be
07:00released
07:01on bail this is after a charge is uh preferred against the child however this is an often overlooked
07:09proviso within section 13 there is a proviso that goes on to say that if a child is then
07:18charged uh charged for an offense under chapter 6a of the penal code what is chapter 6a of the penal
07:25code
07:25the title is offenses relating to terrorism terrorism now if a child is charged for under section
07:35uh under chapter 6 uh a of the penal code then bail can be denied so what i'm saying here
07:43is even if you
07:44rely on they say that there are bail provisions that allow children to be released well it does not
07:50apply to children who are investigated for terrorism related offenses they still will be detained that can
07:56be detained and bill will not be granted so this is where we are clearly at conflict between sosma procedures
08:02and the child act okay you know when you you said that there are concerns or charges or investigations of
08:11of terrorism i i think often we miss the fact that children are sometimes used or recruited or groomed online
08:22through by extremist networks through social media through online gaming you know we've seen many documentaries many um
08:28um exposes about this does that or should that shape the context of the legal response of the way a
08:39law like
08:40sosma is used well um excellent question now when we deal with children whatever the offense may be the child
08:52act is
08:52equipped to deal with no matter how serious the offense is right so if if they are going to say
09:00that there is the possibility that children are easily influenced to uh or used as tools to conduct
09:07terrorism related offenses while that may have some uh uh what should i say it is uh true research has
09:17shown that
09:18um there are uh groups that have used children to perpetrate these uh terrorism related crimes however
09:26they are children and they must be treated as such so the very fact that they're impressionable and easily
09:33influenced how do we use such uh draconian uh detention laws on them we should be looking at rehabilitating we
09:43should be looking at reforming the minds of these children and not treating them as terrorists if i
09:49could you know uh broadly use that word so uh sure we need uh well there are security offenses and
09:59we have
09:59sosma to cover the procedures for terrorism related activities however when it comes to children they
10:06should not sosma should not be used or applicable applied to detaining or charging children we have
10:13the child act no matter how grave or serious the offenses may be the child act is equipped to deal
10:19with
10:20children in conflict with the law i can't imagine what those children went through being detained in
10:25solitary confinement for 26 days with very little access to um to the outside what how do we prevent this
10:34from
10:34happening again what is suara i'm calling for now so that this doesn't become a case we read about again
10:42sure immediate measure melissa we call for an immediate moratorium on the use of sosma uh against
10:49children immediate moratorium long term we would ask for uh and this is what we've always sought for
10:56uh the abolishment of sosma i think that the criminal procedure code and any other procedural uh laws
11:04including for children the child act is sufficient to deal with serious crimes including serious
11:11security offenses that has been that has always been our position now uh to to further support my
11:18point um i would you recall the internal the internal security act the isa the isa was for serious
11:26security measures and that was we loosely said that sosma came in to replace the isa right now i just
11:34want to point out that if you the child act actually specifically states that crimes under the isa fall
11:41within the child act it's there in the definition section uh under the child act they refer to the isa
11:48although it has been abolished uh i checked uh yesterday and the it does still refer to the isa now
11:55if
11:55sosma was supposed to be the provision came in in 2012 since isa was also abolished that very year
12:02then why isn't sosma part or or include or well sosma is a procedural law right that came to replace
12:10the isa then why are we using newly created laws to deal with children when even offenses under the isa
12:17was false within the child act or that is the argument or that is what we are we are saying
12:24so no
12:24matter how serious we should not use draconian laws such as sosma or procedural laws such as sosma
12:31against children okay so hopefully there will be a moratorium of ever using sosma on children
12:39until we get this this loophole fixed um this legal loophole fixed shashi thank you so much for being on
12:45the show with me today that's criminal lawyer and director of swaram shashi david there we're going
12:49to take a quick break here and consider this we'll be back with more stay tuned
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