The "false news" trial of Tenaganita director Irene Fernandez was today postponed to Monday morning after defence counsel M. Puravalen told magistrate Juliana Mohamed that he had to attend a meeting at the Bar Council this morning.

"My presence in the meeting is vital as I am the chairman of the Kuala Lumpur Bar Commitee, representing about 5,000 of the 9,000 lawyers in the country," Puravalen told the court.

Juliana then granted the adjournment after deputy public prosecutor Ganesan Somasundram said he had no objections.

Fernandez is being charged with "maliciously publishing false news" after she released a memorandum about tortures and deaths in the illegal immigrants detention camps at a press conference in August, 1995.

The women rights activist and KeADILan supreme council member faces three years in prison if convicted. She is currently out on bail.

A Bangladeshi former detainee of the Semenyih camp, Zakir Hossain, 37, is scheduled to continue his testimony when the court resumes next Monday.

He told the court in his first day of testimony yesterday that he was slapped by a policeman when he refused to strip naked upon arrival at the camp.

Zakir came to Malaysia in March 1994, after walking through a jungle between Thailand and Malaysia for more than nine hours.

He worked in a machinery factory in Klang for a week before he was arrested and sent to the Semenyih camp.

Zakir is the third former detainee to testify in the trial. The trial, which began in June 1996, is the longest ongoing trial in the country's legal history. It entered its 238th day today.

The Bar Council meeting, which began at 10am this morning, is a regular meeting of the council's 36 elected members.

They are expected to discuss yesterday's decision by the High Court to bar 9,000-odd lawyers from proceeding with an emergency general meeting today to discuss allegations of judicial impropriety and misconduct against Chief Justice Eusoff Chin.