Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Ismail today welcomed the release of all six reformasi activists held under the Internal Security Act since June 2001, and added that all other ISA detainees too must be similarly released.

Alternatively, she said, the remaining detainees held for various reasons from terrorism to deviationist teachings should be charged in open court.

"Although we are happy and relieved with their release we will not be satisfied until the rest of the ISA detainees are brought to court and given due process of law," she told AFP .

She dismissed suggestions the government had experienced a change of heart over the use of the ISA and that the release of the six signalled a new era of political tolerance.

The authorities today released Badrolamin Bahrin and Lokman Adam at the expiration of their two-year detention order under the Internal Security Act.

The duo were detained with four other reformasi activist in June 2001 for allegedly plotting to topple the government through militant means.

The four - Keadilan Youth chief Mohd Ezam Mohd Nor, vice-president Tian Chua, supreme council member Saari Sungib and malaysiakini columnist-cum-film maker Hishamuddin Rais - were released two weeks ago.

No longer a threat

"It's a cycle. People are released and then there is another bout of political detentions. There is always the ISA hanging over us."

She said she believed international pressure had influenced the government's decision to release the men.

Parliamentarians from Britain, Japan, Denmark and the Netherlands and a group of Islamic scholars recently issued a series of petitions to the government over the detentions.

However, some analysts suggest that their release is a sign that the government of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad no longer considers Anwar's supporters a threat.

"The release of the six signals that the government is in a confident position. It is a strong indication that they are no longer a threat," said Abdul Razak Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre.

"The government also knows detaining them would create more harm. Putting them in detention would make them martyrs in a way," he told AFP .

"Releasing them makes them insignificant."

Big attendance

Wan Azizah also denied that support for her party and her husband was waning.

Around 35,000 people attended a reception for her daughter's wedding recently "so that shows the support that we have still," she said.

Anwar, once Mahathir's heir-apparent, began serving a nine-year jail term for sodomy in April after completing four years in prison on a corruption charge.

He says he was sacked in 1998 and then framed to prevent a political challenge to the premier as his supporters took to the streets in massive demonstrations led by some of the Reformasi Six.

Mahathir, who has pledged to step down in October in favour of Anwar's successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, denies the allegation.

The government has defended the use of the ISA, originally designed to combat a communist insurgency half a century ago, as a necessary tool against terrorism and political violence.

Dozens of alleged Islamic militants are still being held under the act, many of them accused of being members of the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.

But critics accuse the authorities of using the act to stifle political dissent. AFP