A Bangladeshi witness in the "false news" trial of Irene Fernandez told the court today that he was forced to masturbate in front of a policeman as punishment for coming out of his quarters to urinate at night.

"One night at around 11.30pm, I went downstairs to urinate and a policeman saw me," said Zakir Hossain, 37, a former detainee at the Semenyih illegal immigrants camp near Kajang.

He said that the police guard decided to punish him since detainees were not allowed to come out from their quarters.

"The policeman asked me to take off my sarong and asked me to masturbate. He used his hand to show me what to do. I was asked to use soap and water to make my hand slippery," Zakir said.

"It took a long time to obtain an erection. And it took more than one hour to ejaculate. My hand wasn't slippery after a while," he added.

"I felt pain inside my penis because I was trying to masturbate for a long time, and I used force to masturbate. I had no choice but to continue to comply with the policeman's order. The degree of the pain was rising. I was thinking that if I ejaculated quickly I did not have to go through all this."

Asked by defence counsel M. Puravalen, what he was thinking of when he ejaculated, the witness began to vomit in court.

Magistrate Juliana Mohamad then ordered a short break.

However, when the hearing resumed 30 minutes later, Puravalen told the magistrate that the witness was unable to continue with his testimony.

"Puan, the witness is vomiting repeatedly and is feeling giddy, and I am forced to ask the magistrate for postponement," Puravalen said.

Juliana then adjourned the hearing to tomorrow morning.

Zakir is the third former detainee to testify in the trial. He told the court yesterday that a policeman used a stick to hit his penis and testicles after he told him (policeman) that he had no money with him.

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.

The trial, which began in June, 1996, is the longest ongoing trial in the country's legal history. It entered its 240th day today.