Sarawak Report’s founding editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown has brushed off a Magistrates’ Court ruling sentencing her to two years’ jail for defaming Terengganu Sultanah Nur Zahirah in a book, saying that Malaysia would make a spectacle of itself if it attempted to arrest her.

She told Malaysiakini that she was not even aware of the case and that her lawyers had advised her that the action of the magistrate in failing to notify her or her lawyers was in contravention of the criminal procedure code.