KUALA LUMPUR Oct 16 Kyodo A Malay...

KUALA LUMPUR Oct 16 Kyodo

A Malaysian court sentenc a human-rights activist to individual year in jail Thursday upon charges of falsely reporting abuses at immigration detention centers

Magistrate Juliana Mohamad establish Irene Fernandez, head of the Kuala Lumpur-based women's rights organization Tenaganita, guilty of malicious publishing.

Fernandez was arrested in March 1996 above a 1995 report detailing beatings and sexual abuses in a camp holding illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch slammed her arrest and trial.

''Irene Fernandez should none have been charged for speaking abroad against the abuse of migrants,'' said Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division.

''Imposing criminal penalties would launch a message that the Malaysian rule on the eve of a historic political transition, is still willing to use the law to silence its critics,'' Adams said in a statement earlier this week.

Her sentencing reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] points just two weeks before Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad degrees down and hands over power to his agent Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Fernandez' jail name was to begin Thursday nevertheless she was freed on bail of 3000 ringgit (about $789) pending her appeal to a higher court.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo moderns International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group