By : THE STAR

KUALA LUMPUR: PAS president Datuk Fadzil Noor has alleged that Sunday’s incident at Kampung Kubang Bok in Kuala Ketil, Kedah, was a conspiracy to tarnish the image of the party. He claimed that he had been given an assurance by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi that police would not move in to stop any ceramah held in premises belonging to PAS members or owned by the party.

“However, the police are not adhering to this understanding by breaking into our legitimate ceramah venues,’’ he said, adding that he had instructed the PAS legal aid bureau to study the matter.

“A grave injustice has been done. I hope someone in authority will look into this,’’ said Fadzil.

In the incident, part of the crowd at a PAS ceramah attacked policemen with stones, sticks and acid as well as torched a nearby police truck.

Police claimed that the attack was planned as their investigations showed that the culprits had kept the stones in plastic bags and hung them on a fence.

Fadzil said the whole PAS leadership felt that the burning of the police truck was the work of certain people or their agents as “there were police all over” and it would have been impossible to break through to the area where the truck was parked.

“Nobody with a sane mind would want to break through and throw anything at the truck as what police had suggested,’’ he said here yesterday.

He alleged that the burnt police truck was an old one and had long served its purpose as a transport vehicle.

“This is why we believe that the whole thing was planned and it was a conspiracy to tarnish the party’s credibility,’’ he added.

He said that rather than “listening to orders from political masters,” police should be going back to the pledges in the Constitution to protect the people.