Popular bimonthly magazine Detik has been banned and its sister publication al-Wasilah could be the next victim, editor Ahmad Lutfi Othman told malaysiakini today.

Lutfi, who is former editor-in-chief of Detik , said that he has received a letter from the Home Ministry informing him of the non-renewal of the magazine's permit, which expired last December.

The publication permit of al-Wasilah , a monthly youth magazine, will expire in August and Lutfi said the chance of renewing its permit "appears slim".

Both magazines had been issued show-cause letters last year by the Home Ministry to state why they should not be banned.

"We are apprehensive and hesitate to expand al-Wasilah . Al-Wasilah is among the three publications issued with a show cause letter last year," he said.

The other publications were PAS-organ Harakah and Detik . Harakah was punished early this with its frequency slashed to two from eight per month.

Lutfi added that two other publications could also face an uncertain future. They are the weekly tabloid Eksklusif and monthly magazine Tamadun . But these publications, according to him, were only issued a reminder not to flout certain permit's conditions, unlike the other three, which were asked to show cause.

Meanwhile, Lutfi expressed regret over the banning of Detik , saying that it was unreasonable and without a valid reason.

The letter sent by the ministry did not give any reasons for the banning of the magazine but an official informed him by telephone that the magazine was banned because "the original permit was handed over to another party".

The ministry claimed that the original permit was issued to another person, and subsequently was handed over to Penerbitan Pemuda, the managing company of Detik which belongs to Lutfi.

Lutfi said this was "normal" practice, as was done by Watan publishers. Watan was a biweekly tabloid but later became a daily and is now defunct.

"We truly regret the ban imposed and cannot accept the verbal reason given to us as it is not accurate," he said.

He maintained that the original publication permit was still owned by its rightful owner Samsuri Roslan.

"Samsuri acts as the editorial advisor while I am more involved in the business aspects such as distribution and publication. Furthermore, the magazine is published by Irrecon Corp as stated on the permit. Therefore, the question of handing over the original permit to another party does not arise," he added.

Samsuri is the founder of the magazine, which had its inaugural issue four years ago. He was however, unable to sustain the publication and initially incurred heavy losses.

Lutfi then joined the publication on Jan 1, 1999, and became indirectly involved in the editorial section.

Since then, 17 issues have hit the streets, selling 50,000 copies per issue, until its permit expired in last December. It was initially published once a month before becoming a bimonthly in May last year.

With its publication suspended since in the past four months, the publication has suffered losses of about RM360,000.

He added that the publication had to incur payments to 10 employees involved in Detik . "We cannot retrench them as they have been with us from the beginning," he said.

As for future plans, Lutfi said that they would continue to publish non-periodical magazines to supplement their income. So far, the team has produced three such magazines, namely, Retak , Debat and another one-off publication.

The company will also pay more attention to its online version, Detik Daily, which was launched late last month, although Lutfi said that it is still "under construction".

"We may not be able to make daily updates on the website as promised. It will be difficult to do so as we print more news analyses rather than news updates," he added.

He also expressed an intention to launch a campaign in protest of the ban and to create an awareness among Malaysians on the importance of freedom of speech.

"We hope the ministry will be more rational in the future. We may have criticised the government occasionally but we never intended to break the law.

"We are simply a group of youth who want to implement the idealism of press freedom which is lacking in this country. We are, however, prepared to be banned if anyone can prove that our publication is an organ of any political party," Lutfi added.

Meanwhile, attempts by malaysiakini to obtain comments from the Home Ministry have not been successful.