KUALA LUMPUR, April 8 — Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob reportedly said that the owner of news portal Agenda Daily had failed in his duty to verify facts before posting an article that was allegedly defamatory — claiming the prime minister was begging for support.
Free Malaysia Today (FMT) today reported that court documents showed Ismail Sabri as calling the defence of Agenda Daily’s owner, Muhamad Izwan Mohd Zubit, inapplicable.
“The defendant failed to contact me to verify the statement. Instead, (he) published the article which is defamatory
“The defence of justification and fair comment is not applicable as the statement is false and baseless,” he was quoted as saying in reply to Muhamad Izwan’s defence.
On March 4, the High Court in Kuala Lumpur granted Ismail Sabri an ad-interim injunction against Muhamad Izwan, after the latter's portal published an article in January titled in Malay: “Ismail Sabri bimbang jadi PM paling singkat, ‘rayu’ jangan tarik sokongan”.
This roughly translates to “Ismail Sabri concerned about being the PM with the shortest tenure, begs not to pull out support”
In his defence, Muhamad Izwan had reportedly said that there was no malicious intent behind the publication of the article, that the news portal had practiced responsible journalism, and the subject matter was of public interest.
Ismail Sabri filed the suit on February 17 and the High Court has since fixed case management on April 21.
FMT also reported Ismail Sabri’s lawyer, Joshua Tan, as saying that the court will hear on April 27 whether to grant an injunction to restrain Agenda Daily from publishing or repeating the allegation before the trial is complete.
