PETALING JAYA: Three editors of The Malaysian Insider (TMI) arrested on Monday in connection with a report about the position of the Conference of Rulers on hudud in Kelantan were released at 8.20pm yesterday from the Dang Wangi police station.

TMI managing editor Lionel Morais, Malay news editor Amin Shah Iskandar and features and analysis editor Zulkifli Sulong were in good spirits despite spending a night at the police station since Monday evening.

Yesterday morning, the magistrate’s court had rejected the police application to remand the trio and ordered the newsmen released by the evening.

They were arrested at The Edge Media Group’s (TEMG) office in Mutiara Damansara in connection with a police report lodged by an official of the Conference of Rulers last week.

Police had also confiscated the editors’ phones and a laptop to facilitate their investigation.

Two more senior executives remained in detention — TEMG publisher and group chief executive officer (CEO) Ho Kay Tat and TMI CEO Jahabar Sadiq — who were detained yesterday when they turned up at the police station to record their statements at 10.30am.

They are expected to be detained pending a remand hearing today in which the police will apply for an order to continue their detention.

The arrests were made over a report published on March 25, which said that the Conference of Rulers had rejected a proposal to amend a federal law that would pave the way for hudud to be enforced in Kelantan.

The article said the proposal to amend the law was in a report by the joint hudud technical committee, which comprises Kelantan state religious officials and those from the federal government. The joint committee had prepared the report on the proposed amendments for the rulers to consider at their meeting on March 11, but it did not go through, the TMI report said.

The Keeper of the Rulers’ Seal lodged a police report on March 26 to deny that the Conference of Rulers had discussed the matter — and that it had never issued any statement on hudud in Kelantan.

The newsmen are being investigated under Section 4 (1) of the Sedition Act 1948, which carries a maximum fine of RM5,000, a maximum three-year jail term or both.

They are also being investigated under Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 1, 2015.