KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — Two years after repealing the Internal Security Act (ISA), the Home Ministry has finally moved to release the last six men held at the Kamunting Detention Camp in Perak.

In a brief statement today, the ministry announced it would free three Malaysians, two Indonesians and one Filipino caught under the controversial security law tomorrow.

“All of them were members of the Sabah Darul Islamiah (DI) terror group who were arrested on November 14, 2011 and detained for two years,” the statement read.

The Malaysian men were listed as Maldzmi Pindatun, Mohd Nazri Dollah and Bakar Baba, while the Indonesians were named as Muhammad Adnan Umar and Daro Bandu. Filipino Muadz Hakim rounded out the list.

Human rights activists had criticised the government for continuing to hold suspects under the 1960 law that provides for detention without trial and indefinitely, even after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced its repeal on September 15, 2011.

The announcement was hailed by ex-ISA detainee and current Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, as “an epochal move”, but the DAP secretary-general cautioned that the federal government should not try to dress up the old laws in new security laws being proposed by Najib.

In a statement on December 17 last year, local human rights watchdog Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) claimed there were seven people incarcerated under the ISA in the Kamunting Camp, near Taiping, Perak.

Putrajaya has since replaced the ISA with the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 that still allows for preventive detention, but provides stricter conditions to take the edge off the Home Minister’s arbitrary powers to detain an individual indefinitely and without charge.