KUALA LUMPUR, 20 October 2006 — Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party urged the government yesterday to repeal a decades-old law that allows it to indefinitely detain suspects without trial, and which was used to hold the party leader’s son for five years.

Nik Adli Nik Aziz, who was arrested in 2001 under the Internal Security Act for alleged links with a Muslim extremist group, was released on Wednesday.

The ISA is a colonial era law that allows the government to hold anyone suspected of offenses deemed as threatening the country’s security without trial.

Nik Adli’s arrest was politically motivated and aimed at tarnishing the image of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, or PAS, which is led and spiritually guided by Nik Adli’s father, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, said party treasurer Hatta Ramli.

Ten other suspects held under the ISA, most of them PAS members, were also released along with Nik Adli on Wednesday.

“His release showed the government has no proof to implicate him in anything. The ISA has been used by the authorities as a tool to intimidate the people. It was a scare tactic, a threat,” Hatta told a news conference.

“The ISA was used to tarnish the image of PAS and its leaders. It was an attempt to brand PAS as a terror group.”

Hatta said he believed public pressure and growing anger over the ISA detentions forced the government to release Nik Adli. But he said Nik Adli’s movement is curtailed as he cannot travel outside his hometown in northeast state of Kelantan and barred from going out at night.

The party estimates there are still more than 80 ISA detainees, including those held for security offenses not related to Islamic extremism.

“We demand that all ISA detainees be freed immediately without conditions or be charged before a court of law. PAS also demands that the ISA be abolished immediately,” said party information chief Ahmad Awang at the same news conference.

He said the government had criticized the United States for detaining terror suspects without trial at the Guantanamo Bay camp but practiced a “double-standard” by having its own such camp in Kamunting in northern Perak state for ISA detainees.

Government officials have insisted the ISA was necessary to protect national security and ensure stability.

Local rights groups yesterday also joined in calls for the ISA to be abolished.

“Any detention under the ISA is illegitimate because it violates fundamental standards of human rights,” Amnesty International Malaysia said in a statement.

Lim Guan Eng, secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Action Party, said the continued detention of dozens of others under the ISA was a “mockery of justice.”

Nik Adli’s father is also chief minister of Kelantan, the only Malaysian state to be ruled by PAS. The other states are controlled by the ruling multiethnic Barisan Nasional coalition.

Nik Adli was detained on suspicion of having ties with Kumpulan Militan +Malaysia+, or KMM, a militant group known to be linked to the terror outfit Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

Hundreds of people were arrested in a sweep against KMM members in 2001.

The crackdown intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, destroying the KMM-JI network.