THE Home Ministry denied there was misuse of power by the police when they detained Malaysia Today blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin.

The allegations were baseless and were intended to confuse the people, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar told the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

He said the police would conduct investigations when there were reports of wrongdoing.

"The police are given the power to investigate and call any witness and the suspects will have their statements taken to assist investigations," he said in reply to points raised by MPs during their debate on the King's address.

Syed Hamid said Raja Petra was called and his statement was taken but he was not detained.
"Based on the investigation, he was charged under section 4(1)(C) of the Sedition Act 1948 on May 6."

He said Raja Petra was given an option to post bail but he refused and chose to stay in the Sungai Buloh Prison.

"Thus the statement that the police had misused their powers in detaining Raja Petra was baseless and are attempts to mislead the people," Syed Hamid said.

On the country's crime index, Syed Hamid admitted that the incidence of crime had gone up last year compared with the situation in 2006.

"However, the increase is not that significant."

Syed Hamid said last year the country's population stood at 27.3 million and the reported crime index was 209,559. The case per 100,000 population was 767 compared with 753 in the previous year.

He denied that 20 per cent of crimes were committed by foreigners.

Based on the crime index between 2004 and 2007, the number of cases involving foreigners was not more than 3 per cent and this figure was on the decline, he said.

Syed Hamid said there was an average of eight rape cases a day.

He said in 2005, there were 1,931 rape cases with 132 foreigners involved.

There were 2,431 rape cases in 2006 with the involvement of 143 foreigners.

Last year, there were 3,098 cases, 225 of them involved foreigners and from January to March this year, there were 725 cases, with 51 of them involving foreigners.