At about 11am on Friday (May 28, 2004) the police arrested BSA Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman with permanent residence in Malaysia, under the Internal Security Act. He was issued a two-year detention order and swiftly transported to the Kamunting detention centre in Perak.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said, from Beijing, where he is on an official visit, that Tahir is a chain in the international nuclear blackmarket a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, had put together. He said the ISA is invoked because it compromises Malaysia's security. The police in a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency in February said Tahir had admitted he was a middleman for this blackmarket, and has given valuable information about it. But Abdullah says he could not be detained then because the police did not have the evidence. They now have it. He is detained. The matter is closed. No one should question this.

But it raises disturbing questions. The ISA is a law designed to be used in extremis, when the laws of the land cannot cope with the emergency at hand, and is for that purpose only. But it is now used by governments with similar laws to remain in power by detaining political opponents and circumscribing political parties they consider dangerous. Worse, the laws are amended over the years to remove the considerable safeguards the laws originally had so those arrested under it could have access to the courts.

In Malaysia, the ISA is often used to threaten the government's political opponents. It is now a catchall law that allows people to be detained without proper investigations. It has over the years become a law that presumes anyone caught in it to be a national security threat. Its reach is so broad that it can be used at will. Even a former deputy prime minister got caught in the ISA maze, during which he was beaten to an inch of his life by none other than the Inspector-General of Police.