US blogger to be tried for insulting Singapore judges

AFP reports:

A US national said Tuesday he will be tried in Singapore next month for allegedly insulting two judges who had presided over cases involving an opposition leader.

Gopalan Nair, a former Singaporean lawyer who is now a US citizen, told AFP he has not yet hired a lawyer to represent him in the trial from September 8-19.

"At this moment, I am representing myself," he said.

Nair faces two charges of insulting judges on his blog. Each charge carries a jail term of up to one year, a 5,000 Singapore dollar fine (3,676 US) or both.

In the first charge, he is accused of insulting Justice Belinda Ang, who presided over a defamation case where Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong testified against the leader of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP).

Nair, 58, alleged that Ang was "prostituting herself during the entire proceedings by being nothing more than an employee of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders," a court document said.

In the second charge, Nair is alleged to have sent an e-mail to Supreme Court Justice Lai Siu Chiu in 2006 saying he has "no shame" and that judges "are selling their souls and their conscience for money," according to a court document.

I am glad I live in a country that has free speech. I have said worse things about Commissioner Irwin H. Joseph. He sold his soul a long time ago. Just go into his court, and you will see that he acts cruelly and maliciously against people that he does not like.