KUALA LUMPUR – The high court here has struck out a bid by five groups to review the “No Further Action” (NFA) decision by the attorney-general (AG) and the inspector-general of police (IGP) over preacher Syakir Nasoha.
In his ruling, judge Datuk Ahmad Kamal was quoted as saying that there were no religious insensitivities and insufficient proof in the edited video featuring Syakir.
He added that the AGC found that the video had been edited and failed to meet the high threshold of evidence by just lodging police reports and putting forth edited videos.
The judicial review was filed on September 15 last year by the Global Human Rights Federation (GHRF), Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak, the Sarawak Association for People’s Aspiration, Ex-Students of Chinese Schools, and Pertubuhan Malaysia Tamilar Munnetra Kalagam.
In a statement, GHRF said the groups were “truly dissatisfied and disappointed” with the decision given today and would file an appeal with the appellate court soon.
The judgement was delivered at 2.30pm today via a Zoom meeting.
Previously, the applicants sought an order of mandamus to compel the authorities to act against Syakir and a declaration that the AG’s decision was arbitrary and violated Article 8 of the federal constitution.
Similar police reports were lodged against preachers Zamri Vinoth Kalimuthu, Firdaus Wong Wai Hung, and Idris Sulaiman.
GHRF last year submitted a memorandum to the Bukit Aman police headquarters, the attorney-general’s office, the Islamic Development Department, the Prime Minister’s Office, and Istana Negara on the matter.
On October 1, 2021, a one-minute video of Syakir claiming that Hindus, Buddhists and Dayaks, among others, would want to annihilate the Muslims at the end of time.
Later, he said the video was edited and caused some misunderstanding as the sermon was meant for Muslims. – September 26, 2023