A grandchild on her lap, Hadijah CP Veeravu pulls out a stack of letters from her first-born.

"They had high hopes of freedom," the 51-year-old grandmother said, sifting through the prison-issued paper from the Kamunting detention centre.

Her son, Mohamad Fadzullah Abdul Razak, 30, is one of the several Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees to have launched a hunger strike to demand freedom last week, following the abolition of the Act.

NONE Clad in a floral baju kurung and white tudung , Hadijah ( left) is a picture of calmness when she speaks of her son but when asked how she feels about the strike, her voice quavers slightly.

Yet, with steely conviction, the dimunitive woman says: "No I will never advise him (to quit the strike) (The detainees) had high hopes of being released after the ISA was repealed, he said so in his letters."

Fadzullah's letters, which he used to write once a week until recently when he stopped, are sometimes cheerful and at times poignant.

In his letter soon after the prime minister announced the imminent end of the ISA, he wrote: "There is so much gossip now. Everyone's guessing when they'll be freed. The repeal was announced, but it's not yet repealed. We just have to be patient."

NONE In November 2011, he writes: "The status of ISA detainees is unknown. But if we are lucky we'll be free, only Allah knows when.

"Maybe the opposite will happen...everything happens without our knowledge, everything is hard to predict. That is ISA..."

Hadijah, who cites Quranic verses as a source of comfort, is dry-eyed when she reads the letters of her son who has not been home since July 15, 2010.

"People ask why I'm not crying, but crying doesn't change anything. So I pray, for strength to get through this, for him and for me.

"I will support him and his friends, because I know they chose this because they feel there is no other way to freedom," she said.

An unexpected call

Her husband Abdul Razak Mohd, 54, was a bundle of nervous energy when Malaysiakini called at their Sungai Buloh home yesterday.

In between attending to crying toddlers and sneaky kittens, he has been on the phone with the detention centre and others who might know more about the hunger strike.

The camp director, he says, is not taking his calls and he is worried about the hunger strike's long term effects on his son's health.

NONE And then, unexpectedly, Fadzullah, or Ajoi to his family calls.

"Suhakam i s coming to check on you. Are you on hunger strike?" he asks his son, but Fadzullah doesn't answer, instead asks that his sister who lives in  Perak visit him as he has "something to pass on".

The telephone call lasts barely a minute but gives some respite to his parents as he sounds well, but details of his strike are still missing. Fadzullah only told his sister last Sunday that he started his strike that day.

Hadijah said this is the first time Fadzullah had called the family since they moved to Sungai Buloh two years ago as calls are expensive-- "they charge him more than a ringgit per minute to call here".

To this day, his parents are convinced that their son did nothing wrong and he had always been a quiet, pious, straight As student.

He scored straight As in UPSR and PMR, obtained first grade in SPM with an aggregate of 8 and graduated with a second class upper bachelor's degree.

When he was taken away, Abdul Razak said, he just started working as a sales executive-"he was earning about RM5000 so he said he would support us"--and was giving tuition to schoolchildren after work.

"He was always at home, and only went out to the mosque for prayers or to attend tazkirah (religious talks). He's really quiet, would only speak when spoken to...how could he have committed a crime?" his father asked.

According to his detention order, Fadzullah, who has a Bachelor of Science (Geographical Information Science) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, is held for being a threat to national security.

He was alleged to have played the role of recruiter for Jemaah Islamiyah, which his parents said he had never mentioned.

Old charges resurrected?

Abdul Razak said when Fadzullah was first detained, they took him handcuffed to the Bukit Aman police remand centre (PRC) and held him there for two months to probe three robbery cases.

NONE "They told us he had robbed a jewellery shop and a sundry shop, using a parang. They also said he stole chemicals from a school laboratory to make a bomb," he said.

But when the parents asked Fadzullah what he was interrogated on in Bukit Aman, their son said they didn't ask him anything.

"If they had evidence why did they tell us to make him confess? Why didn't they charge him in court?" he asked.

He said the special branch officers said then that the criminal investigations department wanted to "take Fadzullah (for the robbery charges)".

"Back then, they said they didn't allow it as he could be jailed for 20 years under those charges but in ISA only two years. But if he was sentenced for 20 years we know when he'll be out. Now we don't."

The repeal, too, does not seem to inspire much confidence.

Hadijah said Fadzullah's letters stopped coming earlier this year and when his sister went to visit him in Kamunting, she found that he had been taken to Bukit Aman.

"The police say they are investigating him for the robberies again...reviving the old cases after all this," Abdul Razak said.

The ISA was repealed last month and replaced with the Security Offences and Special Measures Bill, which is yet to be gazetted.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein had earlier said that the government has yet to decide what to do with the detainees, all of whom he said, are being held for terrorism-related activities.

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ISA hunger strike: Detainee's mum pleads for info