SOSMA (Act 747): The Special Procedures Malaysia Uses for Security Offences

SOSMA creates no crimes. Open Act 747 looking for the offence it punishes and you will not find one — every offence it deals with is defined somewhere else, chiefly in the Penal Code. What the Act supplies is a set of procedures: how a person may be arrested and held, how communications may be intercepted, how bail is decided, where the trial is held, and how evidence and witnesses are handled once a case is treated as a security offence.

This page is the statute record for Act 747 — its identity, its scope, and the special measures it provides, described as the text sets them out. It does not discuss any prosecution, any individual, or any argument for or against the Act.

At a glance

Short title	Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (SOSMA)
Act number	Act 747
Long title	”An Act to provide for special measures relating to security offences for the purpose of maintaining public order and security and for connected matters”
Royal Assent	18 June 2012
Published in the Gazette	22 June 2012
Came into operation	31 July 2012, by P.U. (B) 256/2012
Structure	8 Parts, 32 sections, 2 Schedules
Applies to	”Security offences” — offences specified in the First Schedule

What makes an offence a “security offence”

The whole Act turns on one defined phrase. Section 2 states simply that the Act applies to security offences, and section 3 defines a security offence as an offence specified in the First Schedule.

The First Schedule does not restate offences in full. It points to existing provisions of the Penal Code — its offences under Chapter VI (offences against the State) and Chapter VIA (offences relating to terrorism). The Schedule can be amended, so the current list should be read from the up-to-date text of the Act rather than assumed.

The practical consequence is a gate. Nothing in Act 747 attaches to a person until the offence in question is one the First Schedule captures. Everything below is what follows once that gate is passed.

The eight Parts

The Act is organised into eight Parts, and the Part headings are themselves a map of the special measures:

Part	Heading
I	Preliminary
II	Special Powers for Security Offences
III	Special Procedures Relating to Electronic Monitoring Device
IV	Special Procedures Relating to Sensitive Information
V	Trial
VI	Special Procedures Relating to Protected Witness
VII	Evidence
VIII	Miscellaneous

Part II — arrest, detention and interception

Section 4 (arrest and detention) is the most-cited provision. Its subsections build up in sequence:

• 4(1) — a police officer may, without warrant, arrest and detain any person whom he has reason to believe to be involved in security offences.
• 4(2) — the person arrested shall be informed as soon as may be of the grounds of arrest.
• 4(3) — no person shall be arrested and detained under the section solely for his political belief or political activity. Subsection 4(12) defines what political belief and political activity mean, tying them to lawful activity through registered political parties and lawful expression directed at a government.
• 4(4) — the person may be detained for twenty-four hours for the purpose of investigation.
• 4(5) — a police officer of or above the rank of Superintendent of Police may extend the detention for a period of not more than twenty-eight days, for the purpose of investigation.
• 4(6)–(8) — instead of continued detention, the person may be released with an electronic monitoring device attached, on a report to the Public Prosecutor.

Section 4 also carries a built-in review clause: the extended-detention power in subsection (5) is subject to periodic parliamentary review rather than being open-ended in time.

Section 5 (notification and access to counsel) requires the investigating officer to notify the next-of-kin of the arrest and, subject to a limited exception, to allow the person to consult a legal practitioner of his choice. Under section 5(2) an officer not below the rank of Superintendent may authorise a delay of not more than forty-eight hours for that consultation where he believes it would, for example, interfere with evidence, lead to harm, alert other suspects, or hinder recovery of property.

Section 6 (interception of communication) allows the Public Prosecutor to authorise interception of communications likely to contain information relating to a security offence, and permits an officer not below the rank of Superintendent to intercept in urgent cases. Information so obtained is later made admissible by section 24.

A recurring textual feature runs through this Part. Sections 5(3) and 6, among others, state that they have effect “notwithstanding anything inconsistent with Article 5 of the Federal Constitution” — Article 5 being the liberty-of-the-person guarantee in the fundamental liberties of the Federal Constitution. The Act sets these clauses out expressly rather than leaving the relationship implied.

Parts III and IV — monitoring and sensitive information

Part III governs the electronic monitoring device already introduced in section 4: how it is applied for, attached and dealt with. Part IV governs sensitive information, a term section 3 defines broadly to include material relating to Cabinet and State Executive Councils, sovereignty, national security, defence, public order and international relations, at any classification level. Its provisions restrict how such information is produced and disclosed in proceedings, including a requirement (section 9) that an accused give advance notice of an intention to disclose sensitive information in his defence.

Part V — trial and bail

Section 12 provides that all security offences shall be tried by the High Court. Which courts sit where is set out in the court hierarchy.

Section 13 (bail) states that bail shall not be granted to a person charged with a security offence. It then carves out narrow exceptions: a person below the age of eighteen, a woman, or a person who is sick or infirm may be released, subject to the conditions the section imposes and to an application for an electronic monitoring device. The exceptions do not extend to a person charged with an offence under Chapter VIA of the Penal Code (the terrorism chapter).

Part VI — protected witnesses

Part VI provides for a protected witness, defined in section 3 as a witness whose exposure would jeopardise the gathering of evidence or intelligence, or jeopardise his life and well-being.

• Section 14 allows a witness’s evidence to be given in a special manner — so that the witness is not seen or heard by the accused and counsel, but is visible to the court — after the court holds an inquiry, in camera, to satisfy itself of the need to protect that identity.
• Section 15 governs identification where evidence is taken in camera.
• Section 16 makes it an offence to publish anything revealing a protected witness’s identity.

Part VII — special rules of evidence

Part VII sets out evidence rules that apply to security-offence trials, and section 17 states that the Part has effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent with the Evidence Act 1950. Among its provisions:

Section	Subject
18	Admissibility of statements by a person who is dead, cannot be found, or is incapable of giving evidence
19	Conviction on the uncorroborated evidence of a child of tender years, where the court is satisfied as to the child’s understanding
20–22	Admissibility of documents seized, identification evidence, and search lists
23	Non-production of exhibits protected under sections 8 and 11 not to prejudice the prosecution
24	Admissibility of information obtained by interception of communication under section 6
25	Admissibility of documents produced by computers
26	Evidence of an accomplice and of an agent provocateur

Part VIII — miscellaneous

The final Part collects operational provisions. Section 27 allows a Sessions Court Judge to record a statement or confession before trial; section 28 protects the identity of an informer; section 29 gives an investigating officer access to a person already detained or imprisoned under other law. Section 30 provides that where a court acquits a person of a security offence, the Public Prosecutor may apply orally for the person to be remanded in prison pending appeal, and the person is held until the appeal process is exhausted. Section 31 is the regulation-making power.

Reading the right text

The AGC Laws of Malaysia record for Act 747 lists the principal Act of 2012 together with later amendments — recorded on the portal as amendments in 2015 and 2024 — and an online reprint. Because the First Schedule and individual sections have been amended, any live question should be checked against the current consolidated text on the AGC portal rather than the 2012 print or a cached copy.

What’s next

This page fixes what SOSMA is and the special measures it contains. The individual mechanisms — investigative detention, interception, protected witnesses and the special evidence rules — each sit against the ordinary criminal procedure of the Penal Code and the guarantees in the Federal Constitution, and can be traced in more detail from there.

For any specific provision, start from the First Schedule: if the offence is not listed there, none of Act 747’s special measures apply to it.