KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 9 — Datuk Mohd Hishamudin Mohd Yunus disclosed today that the police had once tried to obtain his personal details, ostensibly for his “protection” following a landmark decision in 2001 to release two opposition politicians held under the Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960, which has since been abolished.

The retired Court of Appeals judge, now 66, described his “disturbing” brush with the authorities when he had as a Shah Alam High Court judge ruled in favour of PKR members Abdul Ghani Haroon and Gobalakrishnan’s bid to challenge their detention and granted them their freedom.

Mohd Hishamudin said he had felt happy after his May 31, 2001 decision as he felt he had done a “good thing”, but returned from his leave for a family wedding only to be told by his secretary that a Special Branch officer had requested for his biodata.

“The police officer explained it was for the ‘judge protection’. It was kind of a weird reasoning, what has biodata and protection got to do. It doesn’t make sense,” he said, adding that his secretary had then told the police officer to get the information from the senior sessions court judge.

“Of course I felt a bit disturbed when a police officer, especially a Special Branch came snooping around, it’s a bit disturbing, what were they up to, I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said during a public law lecture here that touched on several of his landmark decisions during his 24-year judicial career.

Mohd Hishamudin said he tried to dispel the disturbing thoughts from his mind, only to be told later the same day by the senior sessions court judge that a police officer had sought his biodata with the same reason of protection of the judge.

The police officer had told the court official that protection was required due to Mohd Hishamudin’s ISA detention ruling which the Umno Youth were unhappy with, he said.

“Of course I felt disturbed, being human, maybe the police officer was trying to get something against me and there were friends telling me my phone was tapped. I don’t know whether it was true or not but nothing happened,” he said.

“But thank God nothing happened to me, I continued to be a judge,” said Mohd Hishamudin, who retired on September 8 as a Court of Appeal judge.

Mohd Hishamudin remembered there was heavy police presence in the courtroom and helicopters hovering above the courthouse when he made his landmark ruling on the PKR duo in 2001.

He said he also ordered the police not to rearrest the ISA duo after they walked free.

He said there was a “disgraceful” practice back then for suspects to be rearrested after they were released by the court, which he added “makes a mockery of the law”.

He noted that the police at that time complied with his orders.

Mohd Hishamudin said he had found the detention of the duo to be in bad faith due to the denial of legal advice and family visits to them, on top of the lack of sufficient justification of their arrests.

He said his call in his 28-page judgment for the scrapping or amendment of the ISA to prevent abuses ruffled feathers among political leaders, with a minister and another deputy minister respectively saying that such remarks was unusual and inappropriate.

“The then prime minister in a press statement said that judges who ‘disliked’ the ISA should not hear ISA cases.

“I was alarmed by these attacks. I never had such an experience,” he said, referring to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who was the sitting PM then.

It was the late Supreme Court judge Tan Sri Harun Hashim who came to his rescue, Mohd Hishamudin recounted, with his assurance that it was “normal” for judges to suggest the abolishment of obsolete laws or call for legal amendments.

Mohd Hishamudin was speaking at a public law lecture titled “The Role of the Judiciary in Upholding Fundamental Liberties”, which was jointly organised by the Universiti Malaya’s Student Representative Council and Law Society in conjunction with Human Rights Day.