KUALA LUMPUR, May 20 — Forty-one activists and a journalist were acquitted by the Sessions Court of participating in an illegal assembly today, over six years after the charge was made against them in 2008.

Sessions Court judge Mat Ghani Abdullah threw out the case after he found that the prosecution failed to raise a prima facie case against the 42.

Among the charged were PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu and senior party leaders Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad and Dr Hatta Ramli, PKR incumbent vice-president Chua Tian Chang and The Malay Mail Online journalist Syed Jaymal Syed Zahiid.

Syed Jaymal, who was then a reporter for online portal Malaysiakini, was also acquitted of a separate charge of obstructing a police officer from performing his duties.

Syed Jaymal had asked the officer about the arrests.

In late January 2008, police arrested 56 people who took part in a rally, organised by a group of NGOs under the banner of the Coalition against Inflation or “Protes” and supported by leaders of the opposition.

Police later charged 42 of the people detained for defying a court order and participating in an illegal gathering at  KLCC.

The protest came barely two months before the watershed 2008 general election in which the opposition denied the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition a two-thirds majority in Parliament for the first time in the country's history.