I am not sure how to view the decision of the Federal Court on the ISA 6. But elation is definitely not it.

Your report states that the 60-day detention period has been found unlawful by the court and the court (after a recess of about half an hour) did not make a ruling on the two-year detention period. This is what the court meant when it said that another application has to be filed challenging the two-year detention order by Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, also the deputy prime minister.

The ruling on the two-year detention order is technically persuasive only if there are clear words in the Internal Security Act sections which suggest a possibility that the detention order is totally separate from the initial charge. This is not clear from your report and it is not clear if these were the matters argued in court.

If a court finds the arrest and reasons for the arrest unlawful, one would think that everything else that comes after that initial unlawful, must be struck down as well by the court.

If we operate from this principle, the argument that the detention order was made after the initial habeas corpus application, is not relevant at all.

This is because the act of the home minister is already tainted with from the start. It is 'poison' from the same tree and must be struck down.

Any technical argument in support of the two-year ruling from this perspective is terribly unfortunate for the ISA 6 and more importantly the state of judicial independence in the country.

In a matter of life and liberty of the citizen, laws must be construed strictly in favour of liberty of the person. A court of law is bound to read statutes in this light and avoid any convoluted interpretation to the law made by parliament which attempts to circumvent this basic principle or which is unclear. The courts must clarify the uncertainty in favour of liberty.

As it is, the ISA six had gone through more than a year of the two- year detention period. An application to challenge the home minister's order would take another year or so, after the supposed general election in 2003.

It is useful for malaysiakini to get the lawyers or families of the ISA 6 to state how the arguments against the two-year ruling was made if at all they were made.