A defamation suit against blogger Ahirudin Attan by a leading newspaper is impossible to defend, lawyers said today as they attempted to have the controversial legal action struck out.

The suit against Ahirudin Attan by the government-linked New Straits Times Press (NTSP) has triggered criticism from watchdogs who say it will stifle free expression in Malaysia, where the media is tightly controlled.

Ahirudin, who writes the Rocky's Bru blog, is being sued along with another well-known blogger, Jeff Ooi of Screenshots, for a series of items published on their sites last year.

"What Rocky is contending is that with the claim the way it is, it is impossible to know how to adequately defend himself," his lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar told reporters at the Kuala Lumpur civil High Court.

"What we are arguing is that the claim must specifically set out which phrase relates to which meaning so that we can know how to defend it," he said.

Ahirudin, a former executive editor of the Malay Mail, a newspaper within the NSTP stable, until he left in 2006, said the blog was set up to share his views, with no "negative agenda."

"I think the blog offers me a channel to say general things and when you write something, you start with something you know... and that's what I have been doing," he told reporters.

"After a while it became a watchdog for the media."

A small protest took place outside the court, with a group of 10 people waving banners which read, "Say NO to NST, say YES to press freedom."

The court set a date of Feb 22 to hear the application to strike out the suit. Ooi's strike-out application will be heard on Jan 30.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Wednesday defended the legal action against the two bloggers, saying that the Internet could not be used to hide from defamation laws.