The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) will be making an unprecedented visit to three police remand centres (PRC) on Thursday.

When contacted, commissioner Prof Hamdan Adnan said Suhakam had sent a written request to the police yesterday, to formally follow up on the verbal agreement received earlier.

Hamdan said the visits will be an all-day affair by a three-member Suhakam team including himself.

"We have never seen these places before and we want to visit these places of detention as such visits are covered in our mandate," he said.

"We want to know what this is all about. As a human rights commission, we need to know how people are being detained and the conditions of detention," he added.

Police personnel will accompany the commissioners to the PRCs at the Bukit Aman police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, and two other yet to be disclosed locations in the city.

PRCs are holding areas used to interrogate those arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) during the initial 60 days of detention. The locations are unknown even to detainees.

The ISA allows for detention without trial, with the internal security minister being empowered to extend the two-year detention period indefinitely.

Report on visits

Hamdan, who heads the commission's Complaints and Investigations working group, also said a report would be compiled on the visits to the PRCs.

The other members of the team are recently-appointed commissioners Choo Siew Kioh and Tunku Nazihah Tunku Mohamed Rus.

Suhakam's interest in visiting the PRCs was prompted by several memoranda from human rights groups, in the wake of allegations of abuse and torture of ISA detainees while being held at these locations.

The conditions of detention came under the spotlight after the treatment of detainees at the Kamunting Detention Centre in Perak was compared with the abuse suffered by inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar then made a visit to Kamunting in May to speak to detainees. He said he did not find evidence of abuse at the detention camp, but that he had received complaints of abuse and torture at the PRCs.

Kamunting is where ISA detainees are held under their detention orders. Among recent allegations was that detainees have been moved in and out of the camp, and taken to PRCs for "further interrogation" without the knowledge of their families.