"125 HELD UNDER RESTRICTED RESIDENCE ACT TO BE FREED THURSDAY"

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 5 (Bernama) -- All the 125 people to be released due to
the repeal of the Restricted Residence Act 1933 will be freed on Thursday, Home
Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Wednesday.

He said they would be released once the order is handed over to the
respective district police chiefs.

"The order has been signed. The process is that it has got to be served to
them by the OCPD (officer-in-charge of police district). I believed that the
very latest is by Thursday.

"The process of serving (the order) to them began when the Prime Minister,
Najib Razak, announced it today," he told reporters at the Parliament lobby,
here.

Najib, when tabling the Restricted Residence (Repeal) Bill 2011 for second
reading in the Dewan Rakyat today, announced that the 125 people held under the
act would be released and that more than 200 warrants yet to be served would be
cancelled.

Hishammuddin said the release of the detainees took into account the
security of the people, and added that the government would constantly monitor
their movement.

He declined to elaborate on the individuals and the crimes they had
committed.

"We'll go into the details when it is done. We take it one stage at a time
because I do not want to go into the polemics of individual cases," he said.

Inspector-General of Police Ismail Omar, who was also present, said the
repeal of the act would not jeopardise the responsibility of the police with
regard to national security.

"The existing laws are adequate to ensure order," he said.
-- BERNAMA