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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

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