KUALA LUMPUR, March 2 — PAS today refused to retract an article by party mouthpiece Harakah Daily linking Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s stepson to 1 Malaysia Development Bhd funds or apologise as demanded by the prime minister.

The Islamist party’s lawyer and central working committee member Hanipa Maidin said Harakah Daily was entitled to publish the report as it was matter of public interest, adding that PAS was prepared to defend its newsletter against Najib’s legal action.

“We are ready to meet him in court... this is an issue of public interest and we are not afraid as it involves public funds,” Hanipa, who is also Sepang MP, told a press conference at the party’s head office here.

PAS received the letter of demand from Najib’s lawyers last Thursday in which the prime minister gave the party paper two days to retract the article and refrain from publishing similar ones in future.

Najib has also said he is taking action against PAS in his capacity as an “individual” to defend the honour of his family.

The deadline has since passed but Hanipa said the party has yet to receive the summons writ from Najib’s lawyers as yet.

The Sepang MP then demanded Najib respond to allegations that he had wanted to use the courts to silence his critics, noting that this was was the first time a Malaysian prime minister had resorted to legal action against political rivals.

“Mahathir never did. The so-called weak Pak Lah, too, never used the court against his critics,” Hanipa pointed out, referring to the two former prime ministers before Najib, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The lawyer also asked why Najib only chose to sue Harakah and not the New York Times itself as the article was written by the American paper.

He also noted that Najib had failed to sue a French paper for an article linking the latter to the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaaribuu.

“Why don’t you sue them too? NYT was the one that made the expose. It was a 16-page expose… why don’t you take them on?

“I’m sure he has the money to engage the best lawyers in the US so why not do it?” Hanipa asked.

The Harakah article titled “Dana 1MDB biayai syarikat filem Riza Aziz?” (“1MDB funds used to finance Riza Aziz’s film company?”) had questioned the source of the prime minister’s stepson to finance his company, Red Granite Productions’s 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street”, and had alluded to a connection between 1MDB funds and the said film.

Should Najib proceed with the Harakah suit, it would be the prime minister’s second legal challenge against an online publication.

In May last year Najib, in his capacity as Umno president and on behalf of his party, filed a civil suit against news portal Malaysiakini over a series of readers’ posts published on their website related to the Terengganu mentri besar saga.