KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court yesterday dismissed the prosecution’s initial objection to the application by former Internal Security Act (ISA) detainee Yazid Sufaat and two other individuals, to drop the charges against them.
Judge Kamardin Hashim decided on the matter after hearing submissions by deputy public prosecutor Datuk Mohamad Hanafiah Zakaria and lawyer Amer Hamzah Arshad who represented the applicants.
Kamardin held that the application had some merit to it and was not an abuse of the court process.
“Therefore, the three applicants should not be precluded from bringing the matter to court,” he said and set May 17, to hear the submissions on the application.
Yazid, 49, a cafeteria operator at the Jalan Duta Court Complex, was charged with promoting an ideology intended to incite the people of Syria to commit terrorist acts while his friend Halimah Hussein and cafeteria worker Muhammad Hilmi Hasim were charged with abetting him.
They were charged with committing the offences at a house in Taman Bukit Ampang between Aug 1 and Oct 20, last year.
Yazid was charged under Section 130G(a) of the Penal Code (Act 574) while Halimah and Muhammad Hilmi were charged under Section 109, both of which carry sentences of up to 30 years in prison and fine, upon conviction.
Earlier in his submission, Mohamad Hanafiah had stated that the application of the accused was an abuse of the court’s process because they should be brought to trial first. — Bernama