Longtime S'pore prisoner freed

Longtime S'pore prisoner freed

SINGAPORE (AFP): A longtime Singapore political prisoner freed
from restrictions on Friday 32 years after his arrest said the
government decision was belated and called for an end to
detention without trial.

"It's a belated move," former MP Chia Thye Poh, who was once
known along with current South African President Nelson Mandela
as one of the world's longest-held political prisoners, said by
telephone as a restriction order on him lapsed on Friday.

"It's already 32 years and the best part of my life was taken
away," said the 58-year-old Chia, a former university lecturer
who was 26 when he was arrested in 1966 after joining a radical
breakaway faction of the ruling People's Action Party.

Chia, who was never brought to trial, called for the scrapping
of the Internal Security Act (ISA) under which he was arrested
and which remains in force in Singapore and Malaysia, where it
was initially used to hold sacked deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim in
September.