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©The Sun (Used by permission)
by Charles Ramendran

KUALA LUMPUR (July 26, 2007): Malaysia-today.net webmaster Raja Petra Kamarudin (pix left), who is being investigated for alleged sedition, emerged defiant as ever yesterday after spending eight hours at the Dang Wangi district police headquarters.

He was summoned for questioning following a report lodged by Umno on Monday alleging the blogger had insulted the King and Islam in his website.

The 57-year-old blogger arrived about 11am, accompanied by his wife Marina Abdullah, 50, and friends. He was believed to have given a statement and met district police chief ACP Mohd Zulkarnian Abdul Rahman.

He emerged at 7.15pm to be greeted by about 30 reporters.

Mohd Zulkarnian said earlier that Raja Petra was being investigated under the Sedition Act.

Marina said it was the second time her husband had been called in for questioning over postings in his weblog. Last year, he was questioned over a posting which alleged the sale of state titles in Negri Sembilan. No action was taken against him.

In 2001, Raja Petra was detained under the Internal Security Act.

Umno information chief Tan Sri Muhammad Muhd Taib lodged a police report against Raja Petra over postings which allegedly condemned the King and Islam. Raja Petra responded via a long posting criticising Muhammad and also made certain allegations against the former Selangor mentri besar.

He told reporters waiting outside the Dang Wangi station: "I came here to defend myself of the allegations and brought my Quran with me and asked them where I went wrong. I demanded they tell me where I had insulted the King and Islam in the website. They made me sign about 30 or 40 papers and I protested when they asked me to reveal the bloggers who posted comments on Malaysia-Today.net.

"How am I to know who? We have 20,000 news items and five million comments from bloggers coming from 146 countries. Although 70% of these are comments from Malaysians, how are we to know who they are. I don't know who they are and neither do I want to know." He alleged that Umno was behind such postings in his website.

"These people are Umno 'cybertroopers', there are about 25 of them paid RM2,750 a month to raid and invade malaysia-today.net. They flood my website with about 500 to 600 unwanted and sensitive comments daily and I lose sleep every night cleaning this mess up by deleting them from my site," he said.

However, he admitted that such comments were open to viewing for hours until they were removed.

Raja Petra said there was an agenda to clamp down on blogs before the coming general election in a move to black out news.

When asked about the allegations made by Muhammad that malaysia-today.net had carried comments which insulted the King, Raja Petra said:

"Where, where is that particular posting he is referring to? If I smoke a cigar with the Sultan of Selangor (Raja Petra's cousin), does that mean I disrespect him? The police asked me about a comment on my website which read 'Why fight, we are Malaysians, let us live peacefully and be happy'. This is a positive comment but I was questioned about what it meant."

He said finally the police asked him what was the purpose of the website and he said he told them "malaysia-today.net was to teach Malaysians to debate in an intelligent and mature manner. Whether it be agreed upon or not, it must be allowed".

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