Jais says it never probed Harapan Komuniti

During raid on church, I did not meet Pastor Koh, says officer

KUALA LUMPUR: Non-profit organisation Harapan Komuniti was not investigated by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais), an inquiry heard.

“We totally did not investigate Harapan Komuniti. Not at all,” its Islamic affairs enforcement management officer Zaaba Zakaria said.

“During the raid, I did not meet (Pastor Raymond Koh) and I did not know him,” he told a public inquiry by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia into the disappearance of Pastor Koh, Perlis activist Amri Che Mat, Pastor Joshua Hilmi and his wife Ruth Sitepu.

Zaaba was referring to the raid on the Damansara Utama Methodist Church in 2011 by Jais.

He said he was not aware (at the time) who the organiser of the thanksgiving and fundraising event was, and only found out through media reports that it was Harapan Komuniti.

Recounting the raid, Zaaba said Jais had received a public complaint about the thanksgiving dinner, which was why it raided the church.

“We received information that there were Muslims at the event. I saw the signboard that it was a thanksgiving dinner,” he said.

He said no arrests were made during the raid and no items were seized.

However, he said, the personal details of 12 Muslims who were in the church at the time were recorded.

Also, lawyers representing the Koh family at the inquiry questioned the credibility of Peter Chong’s statement.

Chong, a former Petaling Jaya councillor, had related why he went to Hatyai, Thailand, on April 6 to look for answers to Koh’s disappearance.

He had spoken about exchanging two to three hours of text messages with a man who had identified himself only as Amir and claimed that he had information on the pastor.

Chong said that while he was being held against his will over there by two men who spoke with a northern Malaysian accent, he realised that those men also knew about the disappearance of Amri, Joshua and Ruth.

Asked by the lawyers how the men could have known about the other missing people, Chong said they probably knew from posters of the candlelight vigils that had been held.

But the lawyers said that this could not be possible because the vigils were on April 8 while Chong was held on April 6.