In Response to news report entitled “Group: We did not
want to plead guilty” New Straits Times dated Friday 3rd October 2008
In response to claims by some Hindraf supporters that they were coerced to plead
guilty to a charge of “participation in an illegal assembly”, the Bar Council
Legal Aid Centre (KL) (LAC) wishes to state the following.
The Legal Aid Centre (LAC) had appointed Datuk Sivananthan to lead a team of
lawyers to take conduct of the case. Initially the case was fixed for trial for
only two weeks. However, after the first few days of the trial, we were informed
by Datuk Sivananthan that the trial judge had wanted to proceed with the trial
until its completion even if it takes a continuous period of 2 months.
This naturally caused a lot of concern amongst the accused persons and also the
lawyers as they had only made preparations to attend the court hearing for two
weeks. Midway into the first week of the trial, the accused persons were given
the option to plead guilty to one charge and in return, the prosecutors offered
to drop the other two charges.
The LAC wishes to state that contrary to the claims that the accused persons
were coerced to plead guilty, the consequences of the guilty plea were explained
to the accused persons by both the LAC lawyers and the legal advisor of Hindraf
who was present with other Hindraf representatives. They were asked to return
the next day with a decision whether to plead guilty or to continue with the
trial. The following day, the LAC prepared a letter and asked those who had
decided to plead guilty, to sign a letter stating that they were aware of the
consequences of pleading guilty. As a result, 28 persons signed the letters on
that day and another two (2) followed suit the following day while the remaining
accused maintained on claiming trial.
Despite the LAC’s maintenance that some of the accused persons had voluntarily
pleaded guilty, nonetheless we are extremely concerned that a continuous trial
period of two months has been fixed for those who have claimed trial. This is
unfair and burdensome to the accused persons as they risk losing their jobs and
would be unable to earn a living during the period. Further, this also
discourages the volunteer lawyers from fully committing and representing the
accused persons, as they will have their own cases to handle during the two
months.
Thank you
Ravi Nekoo
Chairperson