De facto PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim hailed the High Court decision granting a former ISA detainee RM2.5 million in damages as one "that potentially drives a dagger through the heart of a notorious law" though he cautioned this could be overturned on appeal.

"If appealed, this decision by the authorities may be overturned in the Court of Appeal just like Justice James Fong's High Court decision in the Bakun case in 1996 that was overturned by the appellate court the following year," recalled Anwar.

Ex-ISA detainee Abdul Malek Hussin, 51, won a law suit against the government over his arrest in 1998, at the height of the agitation following Anwar's sacking from Umno as its deputy president and from the government as deputy prime minister in early September that year.

Malek claimed in his suit he was beaten and tortured by the police after he had addressed a gathering at the National Mosque on September 25, 1998. The award of damages to Malik is a first-ever for an ISA detainee.

Thousands of Malaysians have been detained under this law since its promulgation in 1960, at the end of the period of the Emergency from 1948 to 1960. Even the infamous law's draughtsman, Professor Reginald Hugh Hickling, had called for its abolishment of its use against democratic opposition in a newspaper interview last year. Hickling died in England last February.

Difficult to annul

"Human rights activists have long clamored for the ISA law to be expunged from the statute book but to no avail," observed Anwar who himself was twice detained under its auspices, once in 1974 as a youth leader and another time in September 1998, following his fall from official grace.

"The battle to abolish the ISA had become a Sisyphean struggle - you roll the stone up the hill only to see it roll down," he continued.

"I had thought that there was good chance the law would be reviewed with a view towards trimming or even abolishing it during Musa Hitam's leadership of Suhakam (National Human Rights Commission) but he called a timeout after 9/11 just when the momentum towards abolishment I had felt was becoming irresistible," recalled Anwar, who was in jail during this period of ferment in Malaysian politics.

"Even if it is overturned by an appellate court, this High Court decision marks a turning point that would be difficult to annul.

"Abolishment of the ISA is an idea whose time has come," he asserted.