The Online Citizen's Terry Xu and writer convicted of criminal defamation over article calling Cabinet corrupt
SINGAPORE: The chief editor of the now-defunct website The Online Citizen (TOC) was convicted of criminal defamation on Friday (Nov 12), along with a man who wrote a defamatory article for the platform under another person's name.
Terry Xu Yuanchen, 39, was found guilty of defaming members of the Cabinet of Singapore by approving the publication of a letter on Sep 4, 2018 that alleged "corruption at the highest echelons".
The article was sent in to TOC under the name Willy Sum, but Xu's co-accused Daniel De Costa Augustin, 38, was the real writer of the piece.
De Costa was convicted of a similar charge of criminal defamation and a second charge of unauthorised access to an email account not belonging to him, which he used to submit the article.
De Costa sent an email titled "PAP MP apologises to SDP" to [email protected] from an Internet cafe in Chinatown on Sep 4, 2018, intending that the contents would be published on the TOC website.
On the same day, Xu approved the publication of the email sent to TOC from a person named Willy Sum, titled "The Take Away From Seah Kian Ping's Facebook Post". Mr Seah's name was misspelt.
The defamatory article said: "We have seen multiple policy and foreign screw-ups, tampering of the Constitution, corruption at the highest echelons and apparent lack of respect from foreign powers ever since the demise of founding father Lee Kuan Yew".
The owner of the email account De Costa used, Mr Sim Wee Lee, testified at trial that he met De Costa while walking his dogs in 2005 or 2006 and they became friends.
He later allowed De Costa to use his email account to help Mr Sim settle his bankruptcy and housing matters, but later found out that De Costa had sent emails criticising government officers without his permission.
............On the unauthorised computer access charge, he argued that Mr Sim had given De Costa consent to access his email account for all purposes, and that the prosecutors had failed to prove the lack of consent.
The judge found that the prosecution had made out all charges against the pair and convicted them accordingly. The TOC website, which was founded in 2006, was taken offline in September this year, after IMDA suspended its class licence for repeatedly failing to comply with its legal obligation to declare all funding sources.
Xu and De Costa will return to court for mitigation and sentencing in December. For criminal defamation, they could be jailed up to two years and fined. For unauthorised computer access, De Costa could be jailed up to two years, fined up to S$5,000, or both.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sin...-xu-editor-writer-criminal-defamation-2308961
