THE controversial Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) needs to be reviewed and abolished as stated in Pakatan Harapan’s election manifesto, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department P. Waytha Moorthy.

Waytha said the 12 currently being held under Sosma over alleged links to the defunct terror group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) should instead be charged in court.

“Sosma violates basic human rights. There are provisions in Sosma that don’t adhere to basic human rights,” he said at a Deepavali open house in Seremban today.

“The PH manifesto states that Sosma should be abolished or reviewed. We need to see if the home minister will act on (abolishing) Sosma,” he said.

Earlier this week, the wives of three of the detainees staged a hunger strike outside the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman, demanding that their loved ones be released before Deepavali.

They ended the protest yesterday afternoon after realising that their husbands would not be released anytime soon.

On October 10, the Special Branch Counterterrorism Division apprehended seven men on suspicion of promoting, supporting, channelling funds to and possessing materials related to the LTTE.

Two of them – G. Saminathan and P. Gunasekaran – are DAP assemblymen from Malacca and Negri Sembilan.

The seven were detained in Selangor, Perak, Kedah, Negri Sembilan, Malacca and Kuala Lumpur.

Two days later, five more men were picked up on the same charge in Penang, Malacca and Selangor.

Earlier this week, five of the 12 filed a habeas corpus application at the Kuala Lumpur High Court to challenge their detention. The court fixed October 31 to hear the application. – October 27, 2019.