Was there a conflict of interest when the Umno Overseas Club Alumni Organisation lodged its police report against DAP parliamentarian Teresa Kok for exposing the infamous nude squats video clip?

Club chairperson Noh Omar, as deputy internal minister, was involved at different stages of the saga over a video recording of a woman being forced to strip in front of a policewoman and do 'ear-squats'.

Contacted this afternoon, however, Noh denied any knowledge of the report lodged yesterday at the Sentul police station by club member Abd Razak Mohd Ghazali.

"Officially I don't know... we never discussed this (to lodge a police report) at our meetings. There was no instruction - he did it in his personal capacity," Noh told malaysiakini when asked whether the club had endorsed the decision.

Noh repeatedly stressed that he was in the dark over the police report, although all press reports today had named the club as the complainant.

The police report was made on the ground that Kok, who the Seputeh parliamentarian, had "stored, distributed and disseminated pornographic material of a nude woman doing squats" at the Parliament lobby last November.

Abd Razak was also quoted as claiming that Kok had "by intention, words and deed" distributed the video clip by way of a laptop computer to several members of Parliament and journalists. He asked the police to conduct an investigation against Kok.

When the scandal broke, Noh had jumped to the defence of the police by saying that an internal investigation had cleared its personnel of any wrongdoing.

He further created a furore by saying foreigners could return home if they deem Malaysian police to be cruel.

After being reprimanded by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, he apologised for his remark but claimed that the media had misunderstood his meaning.

Last month, when an independent commission of inquiry identified the woman in the video recording as a local Malay - thereby clearing speculation that she was a Chinese national - social activists took Noh to task for having allegedly concealed the information all along.

They later urged him to resign after two China Press editors were pressured into resigning over an erroneous report that the woman was a Chinese national.

'Check facts first'

Kok, when contacted this afternoon, sarcastically chided the complainant for "not having done enough homework" before lodging the report.

Ironically, this was done on a day that the inquiry commission released its report on the scandal and its recommendations for the conduct of strip searches.

"The police report is like a slap in the face for the prime minister and the cabinet. It undermines their wisdom in setting up a special commission to investigate the nude-squat incident," she said.

"(The complainant) claimed that I had identified the woman in the video clip as a Chinese tourist. That is not true. It was the Umno-controlled newspapers Utusan Malaysia and New Straits Times that reported this. So why didn't he lodge a report against them?"

She reiterated that she had not distributed a pornographic video clip, but that she wanted to expose the humiliating and inhumane treatment of the woman involved.

On Noh's plea of ignorance of the police report, Kok countered: "It is very hard to believe that he doesn't know what his organisation is doing. If the report was not lodged in the capacity of the organisation, then Noh should openly clarify that."

On her next course of action, Kok said she is looking into the possibility of lodging a police report against Abd Razak for making a false report over inaccuracies in his claims.