KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 16 ― The Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) has filed a challenge in the Court of Appeal, after a High Court ruled last month in favour of students occupying the historic Dataran Merdeka in 2012.

According to a copy of a notice of appeal reproduced on the Facebook page of Fahmi Reza, an activist with the Occupy Dataran movement, the DBKL said it was “dissatisfied” with the ruling which ordered DBKL and the police to compensate and pay costs for wrongfully detaining Fahmi.

“This means DBKL does not want to admit that by its arrest against me during Occupy Dataran in 2012 was invalid, and it does not want to admit that it has violated my freedom and rights on that day,” Fahmi wrote on his public Facebook profile yesterday.

Fahmi also said that so far only DBKL has appealed against the High Court decision.

“The fight for freedom and justice goes on,” said the 37-year-old graphic designer.

Malay Mail Online could not reach DBKL at the time of writing for further comments, but the notice of appeal was confirmed by Fahmi’s lawyer Syahredzan Johan.

On December 29 last year, Justice Datuk Hue Siew Kheng ruled that the arrest was unlawful, and ordered both DBKL and the police to pay Fahmi compensation of RM5,000 and RM3,000 respectively.

The court also ordered them to pay exemplary damages of RM20,000 for DBKL, and RM10,000 for the police. They also had to pay costs of RM20,000 and RM10,000 respectively.

Occupy Dataran staged their camp-in after some 500 tertiary education students marched through Kuala Lumpur on April 14, 2012 to demand the abolition of the National Higher Education Fund (PTPTN).

Fahmi was then detained by DBKL officers on April 22, 2012 when they were trying to clear the historic square of the Occupy Dataran campers.