Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) lecturer Airil Yasreen said he has written to Universiti Pertahanan Negara Malaysia (UPNM) over allegations that their professor Ridhuan Tee had plagiarised the former's blog articles.

In a lengthy explanation on his Facebook account, Airil said he has also forwarded the email he had sent to the deputy vice-chancellor of UPNM to UTM’s lawyer, but there has not been  any response so far.

“Maybe they are still investigating, so we have to wait,” he said.

NONE Airil ( right ) said he himself was not aware of the matter until this March, when a Free Malaysia Today reporter sent him a copy of Ridhuan’s alleged academic thesis  said to have been plagiarised from Airil’s 2009 blog.

“Here, I need to stress the fact that it was a copy given to me because I am not sure whether the copy is indeed Ridhuan’s academic work,” Airil said.

“But as far as the copy that was given to me was concerned, it was definitely plagiarism,” he said.

In a rather a light-hearted manner, Airil defended the “grammatical errors” in his original article, which DAP’s Seputeh MP Teresa Kok at a press conference yesterday said were reproduced as is in Ridhuan’s academic work.

“In my defence, I wrote it on a blog and there was no time to check for errors. It would have been different if I wrote an article for a journal. I would have checked the grammar,” said Airil.

“Who asked him to copy?” he asked.

Yesterday, Ridhuan told Malaysiakini that he wished to meet those who accuse him of plagiarising, and said that those who have made the allegations are out to “character assassinate” him.

Malaysiakini has already contacted UPNM on the matter and is awaiting its response.