A Bersih 3.0 protester says he was assaulted while in police custody in order for police to extract a confession from him.

This was after Mohd Safuan Mamat surrendered at the Dang Wangi district police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur about 8am on Monday, to assist police investigations in relation to the April 28 protest, according to the police report he lodged yesterday.

NONEHis lawyer, Fadiah Nadwa Fikri (left), who accompanied him to lodge the police report at the Petaling Jaya district police headquarters yesterday, said Safuan went to Dang Wangi immediately after being informed by his friends that he was sought by the police.

After his statement was taken, which took "all morning", Safuan claimed that he was taken to a lock-up, where a plainclothes police officer threatened, "If you don't confess, you will be beaten in the lock-up", before he was handcuffed.

"While in the lock-up, a uniformed police officer holding a black pipe said to me, ‘So you're a Bersih person?' before kicking me. I fell and was ordered to get up and sit on a chair," Safuan says in his police report.

The 25-year-old technician said he was then told to confess that he had hit a police car with a traffic cone, and was beaten in the face and shoulder with the pipe when he denied having done so.

He said he was then taken away by another police officer, who ordered him to change into the lock-up uniform and was then taken into a cell.

"The officer escorting me told another detainee, ‘He is a Bersih gangster,' and he slapped my face four times while the other officer just watched, without doing anything," Safuan claimed.

When contacted yesterday, Fadiah told Malaysiakini that her client's beatings lasted between 20 and 30 minutes, and he would be able to identify the police officers involved if there was an identification parade.

Document signed under duress

Safuan also wrote in his report that he was again harassed by police officers while waiting to be charged at the Kuala Lumpur court complex yesterday afternoon, and was forced to sign a document under duress.

"They wrote something on a piece of paper and they asked him to sign. He didn't know what the police wrote on the paper, he just signed," said Fadiah, who is also the coordinator for Lawyers for Liberty (LFL).

She said he was charged under Section 440 of the Penal Code for allegedly attacking the patrol car, and Section 174 for "non-attendance in obedience to an order from a public servant."

NONEExpressing bewilderment at the latter charge, Fadiah said, "He surrendered himself on (Monday) morning, so I have no idea why he was being charged under Section 174."

She added that by right Safuan should have been released after giving his statement and charged later, if necessary.

"We are very worried about the remaining 100 or so people who are being hunted down by the police," she said.

Safuan (right) pleaded not guilty to both charges and was released on RM1,500 bail, after which he complained to the LFL and lodged the police report.

Besides Fadiah, LFL lawyer Afiq M Noor and Bersih steering committee members Maria Chin Abdullah and Mandeep Singh accompanied Safuan when he lodged the report.