For newly released political prisoner Tian Chua, the toughest part of his two-year ordeal of detention without trial, under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), was the period he was held in solitary confinement - without access to lawyers, family or doctors.

"The solitary confinement was the most torturous. It was killing me,"said the Keadilan vice- president said in an interview after he was released this month.

"I was blindfolded and handcuffed every time I left the cell. I could only hear the sounds of others, but could not see them.

"The isolation was so bad that I ended up looking forward to the interrogation," he said, recalling his first 52 days of being held incommunicado by the police after he was arrested in April 2001.

"It was deliberate mental torture," he said. "I was asked all sorts of questions, something from the day you were born until the day you were there."

"Then I was moved to a basement cell. There was no sunlight. The air conditioning and the neon lights were on 24 hours a day and you did not know whether it was day or night," he said.

This time, the police interrogators took turns on going back to his answers. "It was to counter check on what I had said before," he pointed out.

'State manufactured confessions'

According to a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, prolonged torture and sleep deprivation were used during the interrogation stage under ISA, and had led some detainees to sign 'state-manufactured confessions' under duress.

Such practices used by the police, during the interrogation of ISA detainees, were exposed during the 1999 trial of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, who is now serving a 15-year jail sentence for sodomy and corruption charges.

During the hearing, Anwar appeared in the Kuala Lumpur High Court with a badly bruised eye as a result of a punch he received from the then Inspector-General of Police Rahim Noor, who was later convicted for the offence.

Tian Chua and other five ISA detainees walked free when an unexpected release order arrived this month. On June1, government officials did not issue an extension of the current detention orders of the six - an extension would have meant another two years' detention.

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All were arrested at the same time with Tian Chua for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government through militant means - a charge that they have vehemently denied.

After two court hearings declared their detention under the ISA to be unlawful, the government proposed amendments further restricting judicial review.

Blindfolded and handcuffed

Tian Chua recalled the day he was arrested.

A group of policemen turned up at this house and told him that he was being arrested under ISA. "From there, I was blindfolded and handcuffed, taken by a truck," he said.

When the truck stopped, the police led him into a building and made him strip and wear a prison uniform. He was then put in what he described as "a very small cell with a hole at the corner as the bathroom''.

In July 2001, Tian Chua said, the interrogations suddenly stopped.

He was transferred to the Kamunting Detention Centre in a small town in Perak.

Life in Kamunting, according to Tian Chua, was a little more relaxed compared to his first 52 days.

He spent time reading and painting cards to send to friends outside. Political exercise was not lacking either. On the first-year anniversary of their jail term, the 'ISA 6' launched a hunger strike to protest against their unlawful arrest.

"Kamunting is a camp with blocks of dormitories. I and (journalist) Hishamuddin ( photo: left ) were in the same dormitory and six of us were together in three blocks," he recalled.

By then, Tian Chua says the group was allowed to read newspapers and receive family members and lawyers. Letters were also allowed, although they were censored. A television was sent in a year after.

"Still, uncertainty was always there and I told myself not to expect anything more," he said. "In prison under the ISA, anticipation could break you down."

Temporary triumph

But Tian Chua sees his release and that of his five friends this month as a temporary triumph.

As a part of the campaign against ISA, he and other five former ISA detainees are planing to sue the police and government for illegal detention based on a Federal Court ruling in September.

The Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States have given another justification for the use of the ISA in Malaysia as a counter-terrorism measure.

According to Amnesty International, 37 people were arrested under the ISA during 2002 for alleged links with groups like the Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia (KMM) or Jemaah Islamiah.

The authorities claimed that both groups were planning to use violent means to set up a pan-Islamic state in South-east Asia.

"No evidence to support these allegations was made public, and none of the detainees have been brought to trial," said Amnesty International. - IPS