COMMENT | Something historic happened this week.

On March 23, the Dewan Rakyat voted down a motion to extend the enforcement period for a key provision under the Security Offences (Special Measures) 2012 Act (Sosma) once it expires on July 31, 2022.

The provision in question is Section 4(5) of Sosma, which allows for detention without a court order for up to 28 days.

It provides that the police, after the initial 24 hours of arrest, “may extend the period of detention for a period of not more than twenty-eight days, for the purpose of investigation.”

This is different from the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, where after 24 hours of arrest and detention, the person under investigation must be brought before a magistrate for a remand order to further detain the said person.

Section 4(5) dispenses with the need to bring the person under investigation to court and allows the police to arbitrarily detain the person for a period of up to 28 days.

This pre-charge power of detention is problematic. The detention is not judicial detention, unlike the remand procedures for...