4 foreigners held for stripping naked atop Mount Kinabalu

Sabah Police have taken into custody two foreign men and two women for having allegedly stripped naked atop Mount Kinabalu.

Sabah Police Commissioner Datuk Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman said on Wednesday that those reprimanded are Canadian siblings, a British woman and a Dutch man.

The British woman was arrested at the Tawau airport on Tuesday as she was about to depart for Kuala Lumpur, and the police brought her here, he told a news conference at the Sabah Police headquarters.

Jalaluddin said the three others surrendered themselves at the Karamunsing district police station at about 6 pm yesterday.

These four people are alleged to have been in a group of several foreign tourists who had stripped naked on May 30 at the South Peak of Mount Kinabalu, Southeast Asia's highest mountain at 4,095 metres.

"All the suspects will be remanded from today," Jalaluddin said.

He also said that police were looking for the rest of the strippers, adding that police believed they were still in Sabah.

Jalaluddin advised the mountain guides to report to the police immediately if they came across indecent behaviour by climbers on Mount Kinabalu.

The local people believe that the tourists' act of stripping naked on Mount Kinabalu angered the spirit of the mountain and caused the earthquake last Friday that killed 18 people who were then climbing the mountain.

Meanwhile, the Magistrate's Court here on Wednesday ordered the four foreign tourists to be remanded for four days from today (June 10) over an investigation into an obscene act on Mount Kinabalu last month.

Magistrate Dzulhelmi Yunus issued the order against all of them. They are aged between 20 and 33.

The four were taken into custody yesterday to facilitate investigation into a group of foreign tourists who had stripped naked on May 30 upon reaching the summit of Mount Kinabalu.

The case is being investigated under Section 294 (a) of the Penal Code which carries a jail term of up to three months or a fine, or both, upon conviction.