Tucking in his first meal as a free man, Hishamuddin Rais was joined by some 20 family members and friends, all eager to hear about his detention under the controversial Internal Security Act.

The worst thing about ISA, he said, is the power it gives to the authorities.

"It allows them to do anything they want to you," he said while drawing on a cigarette. "They may say they are investigating but you know they are going to detain you anyway."

Isham as he is fondly known returned home yesterday after spending two years as an unwilling guest of the state in the Kamunting detention camp in Taiping, Perak.

He was arrested at his home in Bangsar Utama in Kuala Lumpur on April 10, 2001 for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government by 'militant means'.

Also arrested were nine others - seven leaders of opposition party Keadilan, an activist from the human rights organisation Suaram, Badarudin Ismail, and Free Anwar Campaign executive director Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin.

Although all of them denied the allegation, only four were released after intense police interrogation in the first two months.

The rest - Isham and Keadilan leaders Mohd Ezam Mohd Nor, Saari Sungib, Lokman Adam and Badrulamin Bahron - were sent to Kamunting.

According to Isham, he was restrained and blindfolded by the police when he was arrested, and had no idea where he was taken to.

"I was driven around for about an hour. Towards the end of the journey, I could feel that we were driving over several speed bumps and that should mean that we were in a housing area. But I was thinking that they couldn't be taking us to a residential area!" he said.

"The first few days were simply to disorientate us. No one talks to you for days. You don't see anyone or anything. We were all held in separate rooms and we were blindfolded most of the time so we couldn't see who else were there.

"But I heard Saari's and Tian Chua's voices. Once they forgot to put on my blindfold and I walked into Raja Petra who was also not blindfolded. We greeted each other hey, you are here too and so they had to transfer me out," he said chuckling.

Technical committee member

Until today, Isham can only guess where he was held in the first couple of months when he was under police interrogation.

"It could be a police training centre, it could be the Bukit Aman police headquarters. The identity of the building is protected under the Official Secrets Act. I once thought we were driven into an underground tunnel," he noted.

As to the interrogation itself, Isham said his captors questioned him about the people he knew, the work he had done, and about his posts in various organising committees.

"Once they asked me what was the meaning of my post as technical committee member. They asked me if 'technical' meant we were making bombs. I found out later, the charges against us included making Molotov cocktails, but I didn't know anything about it at that time.

"They printed out all my columns in malaysiakini and asked me about them. But that was no big deal. The articles were public material anyway," said Isham, whose weekly 'Dotmai' column appeared on the news website.

He said that he had waited for his interrogators to show him other evidence such as "tapes or photographs" but there weren't any.

"There you are alone, facing six of them. At such times, you just wish you hadn't been born," he spoke softly.

Asked if he was assaulted during the interrogation, Isham said, "No, they only threatened but they didn't do it."

His trademark beret

Although wearing his trademark beret and a red bandanna around his neck, Isham was visibly much thinner.

"I lost eight kilogrammes. It was all prison food. Depending on what was cheap at the Taiping market, that would be what we would get for a week, cooked in different ways.

"I remember that we used to get salted fish on our menu every Monday and Friday, both for lunch and dinner.

"Then one day, I wrote a poem about the salted fish which was later published in Harakah .

"All of a sudden, we did not get salted fish anymore. Who said poems do not change things?" he quipped.

But it appears that the most surprising thing that happened to him during his two-year incarceration was his release order, issued last Sunday.

Just two weeks before, anti-ISA campaigners were all up in arms with the authorities after hearing that Isham and his co-detainee Tian Chua were allegedly assaulted by 30 armed men at the Kamunting camp.

Many fear then that the incident would be used as an excuse to keep them in Kamunting for another two years.

"Why did they release me unconditionally?" he asked.

But that is anybody's guess.

Deputy Home Minister Zainal Abidin Zin said it was not due to any outside pressure but because of 'improvements' in the character of the detainees while they were in detention.

A little rusty

Asked if he thought Lokman and Badrulamin would be similarly released when their detention orders expired next Thursday, he said, "They should have been released from Day One."

"There are also all these other people still kept in there. The saddest thing is the (continued detention) of the al-Ma'unah group. They are afraid and they are very quiet. They are very good Muslims and pray all the time," he said.

For anyone wishing to read more about Isham's experiences, no doubt it will all be penned down once he settles back into normal life as a free citizen.

"I want to write again but I am a little rusty now-lah," he said jokingly.

After 782 days in detention, that is quite understandable.