Share |

Wednesday 13 January 2010

Church arson: Facebook lead a dead-end

The Star

PETALING JAYA: Police arrested and later released a youth who claimed that he witnessed the making of explosives used in one of the arson attacks on churches over the past few days.

The 19-year-old college student, who had made that claim on popular social networking website Facebook, was picked up by police at his residence at Sunway Mentari Court here, at around 7.30pm on Monday.

Selangor police chief Deputy Comm Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar said after a few hours of interrogation however, the youth confessed that the claim was a hoax.


“The youth was released after he was sternly warned of his actions,” he said, adding that police would be monitoring all blogs and social networking websites.

He added police took such claims very seriously and would take action against anyone trying to create racial tension.

DCP Khalid also urged the public to not spread rumours.

In the Facebook posting the youth had claimed he was around with some other people when the explosives were being made but was not involved in the attack.

Eight churches have been the victims of arson or attempted arson attack since last Friday, following a High Court ruling on Dec 31 that Catholic weekly the Herald had the constitutional rights to use the word “Allah” to describe “God” in its Malay-language edition.

No comments: