Being ISA detainee ‘095’ for seven years

It took four hours for the police to search his house but to the timid Mat Sah Mohammed Satray, it was best not to utter a word of complaint.

Hands clenched into fists and forced together by the uncomfortable metal of handcuffs, the 39-year-old perched nervously on a two-seater settee in his living room as they raided his home.

Their movements woke his son who burst into tears at the sight of his father in handcuffs.

Mat Sah tried to carry the eight-year-old child onto his lap to comfort him but failed because his hands were bound.

His mind was in a state of confusion. He was desperately trying to understand why he was sitting there, handcuffed in his own home.

His only source of strength stood beside him. Norlaila Othman, his wife, kept silent too as she watched the police turn their house upside down but her quiet presence was reassuring.

The police took pains to search every nook and cranny of the couple’s modest home in Taman Keramat but never said a word of what they were looking for.

There were at least seven of them in the tiny house — six in plainclothes and one, an assistant superintendant, in uniform. They had arrived shortly after midnight on April 18, 2002, armed with a small suspicion that, unknown to Mat Sah and his wife, would later change the course of their lives.

“We have information that you have been involved in activities that are a threat to national security. We are arresting you,” the uniformed officer had told a bewildered looking Mat Sah, who had earlier answered the door.

The search through his house later only stopped when one officer found a bright red book in a cabinet of the third room in their single-storey home.

Mat Sah still remembers the book — it was bright red in colour and told of stories during the communist insurgency. It was one of his few favourites among the extensive collection of old books he had obtained during his work as a technician in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

“This is it. This is just what we want,” Mat Sah claimed one officer said while waving the book around.

When they were done at about 4.30am that morning, the policemen led Mat Sah away.

Alarmed, Norlaila, with the frightened Suhaid in her arms, trailed her husband to the gate.

“A female officer told me — do not worry. We will take care of him. Just cooperate and everything will be fine. He will come home soon,” she said.

What she did not know was that “home” meant the walls of confinement at the infamous ISA detention camp in Kamunting, Perak.

She also did not know she would have no avenue to question the injustice of his detention, no avenue to seek legal redress, no avenue to put in any form of complaint.

That is, after all, the primary and most highly criticised provision in the 50-year-old Internal Security Act 1960 — the power to detain a person without granting trial.

“My husband, the soft-spoken, kind-hearted man I married, was accused of being a terrorist. And they took him away from me for seven years because they thought he would be a threat to national security. He was detained on a mere suspicion,” Norlaila said.

As she spoke, the school teacher kept stroking the arm of her husband, who is today finally free from the clutches of the security law, as if reassuring herself that he was really there.

The couple were relating their harrowing experience with the ISA to The Malaysian Insider during an interview at their new home in Taman Melewar, Gombak, here recently.

Mat Sah said that from his home, he was brought in a white van to the Ampang police station and then to the Sentul police station where his information was taken down and photographs snapped.

“They they gave me a pair of goggle-like glasses to wear. The lens was painted black so I could not see where I was going. I was made to enter the van again but I did not know where they were taking me.

“The only thing they told me, repeatedly, was that I was a terrorist. Over and over again, they said I was detained because I was a terrorist,” he said, adding that he was too frightened to respond to the allegations.

Mat Sah was then brought to the police remand center (PRC) on Jalan Ipoh where he was given a lockup uniform, a pail, a plastic tumbler, a bar of soap and a small toothbrush.

“From then on, I no longer had a name. I was no longer Mat Sah. I was called ‘095’. I could never forget those numbers,” he said.

His cell, he recalled, was just small enough for a tiny bed and mini shower cubicle. It was windowless and only had a small screen on the ceiling for ventilation.

“It was so dirty. I had to clean it up myself. And it stank of mould.

“There was one small bulb above me to brighten the room. The door was made of heavy metal and had a small flap that could only be opened from the outside. They passed me my meals through that flap,” he said.

Mat Sah said his first thought when he was led into the dirty cell was: “It’s over.”

Every day from 9am to 5pm for the next three weeks of his life in confinement, Mat Sah was interrogated.

“They asked my painful questions. Sometimes I would get upset and I would cry, not out of sadness but out of frustration.

“Imagine, they would even ask me personal questions like the number of times I had sex with my wife. I would get so... ‘geram’,” he said.

He added that his interrogators were fixated on his relationship with influential Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was once arrested in relation to the Bali bombings in 2002 and was also accused of being the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyyah (JI), an international terror group reportedly dedicated to establishing an Islamic state in the Southeast Asia.

The latter has since been acquitted of his involvement in the bombings due to insufficient evidence by the Indonesian authorities.

Abu Bakar used to deliver lectures for Muslims working at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and Mat Sah was in the study group formed by the influential scholar.

“And that became the basis for my detention. But what did I do? He was just a lecturer and yes, I have listened to his speeches. But at that time, can you imagine, I never even knew what JI was. I never knew it existed,” he said.

His wife said that the very next day after Mat Sah was detained, newspaper reports claimed that he was a part of a group of 13 others who were detained on suspicion that they were members of the Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (Malaysian militant group) who were planning an attack on Port Klang.

“When I visited him and my son showed him the newspaper clipping, he got a shock. He said he was never asked by interrogators if he had plans to destroy Port Klang,” said Norlaila.

She added that the police officers and Mat Sah’s interrogators would advise them repeatedly not to engage lawyers to help them or speak to politicians or reporters.

“They would tell me — if you speak to these people, your husband would never be set free.

“They also said that lawyers were merely out to earn my money. I believed them. I did not know my rights and I was afraid. So I kept quiet and just prayed he would be released,” she said.

Mat Sah was detained at the PRC for 55 days, which he only knew by his collection of the rubber bands that were used to tie up his food containers.

“I had no watch and no way of knowing the time. So every time they gave me my food, I would keep the rubber bands to keep track of the number of days I was in there,” he said.

On June 12, 2002, Mat Sah received more bad news.

“They came into my cell and gave me a letter telling me that I was to be detained for two years under the ISA. I had no reaction. I just felt so... useless,” he said.

The next day, Mat Sah was checked into the ISA detention camp in Kamunting, which eventually became his home for the next seven years.

“The first two years he was detained, I said nothing. I did not fight. I did not try to seek for help. I prayed that our obedience would win him his freedom,” said Norlaila, adding that she would visit him at the camp weekly.

When Mat Sah’s detention was extended for another two years however, Norlaila’s patience broke.

“It was just before Pak Lah announced the 11th general election in 2004. I started engaging with non-governmental organisations and lawyers. I sought and lost my habeas corpus application in court. I started to travel the country and internationally, seeking for justice,” she said.

Her struggle however, did not come without some backlash. In 2006, when her husband’s detention order was up for review, he was told he would stay for another two years.

“They told me that my wife was causing trouble outside. They advised me to tell her to stop. To keep quiet and stop fighting.

“I did tell her but then there is a bigger picture that we had to look at. It was not just my detention but also those of the others who suffered with me because of the ISA,” he said.

With her husband’s green light, Norlaila continued her struggle. She became a committee member in the Abolish ISA Movement (GMI) and spearheaded signature drives across the country.

She took two years leave from teaching and survived on the donations from a good samaritan living in the US, who knew of her story.

In 2006, Norlaila managed to meet with Pak Lah or Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who was still the country’s prime minister at the time.

“My friend told me he was giving out mock cheques to some Felda settlers. So I took our memorandum, slipped it into an envelope and went to the function.

“We managed to corner him when he was visiting some stalls at the function. I gave him the enveloped and pleaded with him to release my husband. He told me he did not know my husband had been imprisoned,” she said.

When Pak Lah’s security guards began closing in on her, Norlaila said she ran to her car and sped away as soon as she could.

Her brave actions did not however come without negative repercussions. The very next day, claimed Norlaila, Mat Sah was thrown into solitary confinement.

“I was told that my wife was too active outside. They took me from my dormitory and put me into a small room, similar to the one I was in when I was at the PRC,” he said.

“I was upset when I heard about it but I knew that I should not let it stand in my way. I would get flak from his parents too. But my friends and the other activists told me to be strong. The struggle has to go on,” she said.

The pinnacle of Norlaila’s fight for her husband came during the planned peaceful protest during the ISA anniversary on August 1 last year.

At the time, tens of thousands flooded the streets of Kuala Lumpur in a mass rally to submit a petition to the Agong at Istana Negara, denouncing the ISA and calling for its abolition.

During the protest, riot police fired tear gas and sprayed chemical-laced water to break the crowd. Over 400 people were arrested, including Norlaila and her 16-year-old son were arrested.

“But our message was clear. We wanted the ISA removed,” she said.

Mat Sah, along with four others — Abdullah Daud, Ahmad Kamil M. D. Hanapiah, Mohd Nasir Ismail and Muhammad Amir M., D. Hanapiah — was finally released on September 15 last year on condition that he would report to the Ampang police weekly and would not stay out of his residence past 10pm.

The parole system, however, finally expired on June 12 this year and today, Mat Sah, now 47 years old, is finally a free man.

Despite this, he still feels his freedom has its limits, as long as the ISA still exists.

He looks over his back wherever he goes and is afraid of rejoining the work field. He fears that people would judge him. The ISA, he said, hangs like a guillotine above his head.

“People may not feel anything but it is in me. In my heart, in my mind. The ISA can never leave me,” he said.

Now that he has been released, Mat Sah is likely to join his wife in her struggle to abolish the ISA.

He believes that his personal experience would serve as a good reminder to the people that when it came to the ISA, no one would be spared.

“The ISA is truly a cruel law. I felt the brunt of it. The torture may not have been physical, but I have been scarred for life, mentally. They turned me into a fool. They can do anything to you and you cannot question them. They can detain whomever they want to,” he said.

Mat Sah urged the public to read up about the ISA and to learn their rights.

“You must know that the ISA determines everything — it determines your life. If they tell you ‘you are a terrorist’, that means that you have to nod your head.

“Because with the ISA, everyone can be a terrorist,” he said.



comments

No one, should be given such powers. The ISA must stop.

UMNO pray? That's a good one! Nothing to do with Islam, you know ! :)

Although he is UMNO's Imam Hadhari, to me he is nothing but the seller of block L and M