KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 ― Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar confirmed today plans to sue Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar over her recent arrest, which she has maintained was unlawful.
Nurul Izzah told reporters at the Kuala Lumpur High Court this morning that the lawsuit will be filed in the next two weeks.
“I am also suing the IGP, yes we must sue,” she said, referring to Khalid.
“It will be in the next two weeks,” she added.
Nurul Izzah was detained on Monday after going voluntarily to the Dang Wangi district police headquarters to record her statement on two separate probes — one on her involvement in the #KitaLawan rally two weeks ago and one on her parliamentary speech for her father, Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
In a statement to explain her arrest, IGP Khalid said Nurul Izzah was detained under the Sedition Act 1948 for making “contemptuous remarks that those in the judiciary system had sold their souls to the devil”.
But Nurul Izzah has since insisted that her arrest was “unlawful” as she is protected by parliamentary privilege, which provides immunity for anything MPs say inside the Dewan Rakyat.
“I maintain that my arrest and detention was completely unnecessary, malicious, unlawful and an assault on the institution of Parliament,” she said in a statement yesterday.
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers have savaged the arrest as unconstitutional and in contempt of Parliament, noting that questioning the judiciary did not come under the ambit of exceptions that would make a parliamentarian criminally liable for remarks said in the lower house.
Lawmakers are granted immunity for speech and actions as part of parliamentary proceedings by Article 63(2) of the Federal Constitution, but this is subject to exceptions listed under Article 63(4) that include questioning the national language, Bumiputera quotas and the Malay rulers.
