(d)
All the peripheral activities like recruiting, training terrorists, and providing direct
or indirect material support, to terrorists or in the commission of terrorist acts are
provided for in other sections under Chapter VIA including hostage-taking.219
The proposed Anti-Money Laundering Act amendments provide a new Chapter VIA:
Suppression of Terrorism, Financing Offences and Freezing, Seizure and Forfeiture of
Terrorist Property. The sections contained in Chapter VIA have extended criminal liability
extra-territorially to citizens and Malaysian body-corporates committing these offences
abroad.220
The Advisory Council of Jurists observes and recommends:
1. The ratification by Malaysia of most of the major international terrorism conventions
makes it timely for a review of the definition of the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ in
domestic legislation and a review of the legal and practical effect of that legislation. A
clear distinction should be made between legislation to combat national and international
terrorism and legislation for less heinous domestic offences against the State, person or
property.
2. The definition of ‘terrorist’ in the Penal Code Amendment Act 2003 is considerably
wider than the definition contained within the Internal Security Act which is itself very
wide. Care must be taken that it is not used to restrict freedom of expression and
association.. Persons who have merely voiced dissent without advocating the overthrow
of the established order by violent means should not come within the definition of
terrorist.
219
Some other noteworthy features are the extra-territorial extension of the application of the Amendment Act to
persons outside Malaysia who commit offences under Chapter VI and VIA outside the country, the extension of
liability from persons to legal personae and other similar entities and groups, the death or the life sentence for
many of the new offences created and the increase of life sentence from 20 to 30 years. The defence of duress
under Section 94 of the Penal Code will not be available to persons who commit terrorist offences under the
reasonable apprehension that instant death would be the consequence if they acted otherwise.
220
Section 66C of the Anti-Money Laundering Amendment Act also provides a new mechanism for
implementing Malaysia’s obligations under the UN Charter in that it now provides that:
Where the Security Council of the United Nations decides in pursuance of Article 41 of the
Charter of the United Nations, on the measures to be employed to give effect to any of its
decisions and calls upon the Government to apply those measures, the Minister of Home
Affairs may, by order published in the Gazette, make such provisions as may appear to him to
be necessary or expedient to enable those measures to be effectively applied.
105