Jailed Malaysian leader's daughter arrested for sedition

KUALA LUMPUR: Disgraced Malaysian leader Anwar Ibrahim's eldest daughter was arrested today on charges of making a seditious remark in parliament by reading out text from a speech of her father criticising his recent conviction.

Nurul Izzah, a member of parliament and People's Justice Party Vice President, was arrested under the country's Sedition Act.

"I have been detained under the orders of the Bukit Aman senior assistant director of D5 (Classified Special Unit)," a tweet on 34-year-old Izzah's personal account said.

"The police haven't told us yet which parts of the speech are seditious or whether the entire speech is seditious," her party's communications director Fahmi Fadzil said.

Last Tuesday, Izzah read out Anwar's speech in parliament, where she spoke out against her father's imprisonment for sodomy and allegedly attacked the judiciary.

People's Justice Party MP N Surendran said in a statement earlier that the sedition investigation initiated against Izzah was "unconstitutional" as it interfered with the rights and privileges of parliament.

Anwar, 67, was convicted on February 10 of sodomising a former male aide in 2008 and sentenced to five years in jail.

The case against Anwar was widely seen as a long-running politically campaign to eliminate any threats to the now 58-year-old ruling regime, whose popularity has been eroding after five decades of dominance.