Clare Rewcastle Brown in a rented flat in Covent Garden from which she was broadcasting Radio Free Sarawak to Borneo Photo: Rex Features
Malaysia has issued an arrest warrant for a campaigning British journalist and sister-in-law of Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, for her investigations into financial controversies swirling around the country’s leader. Malaysian police said that the arrest warrant for Clare Rewcastle Brown would be circulated internationally for activities detrimental to parliamentary democracy and disseminating false reports about Najib Razak, the prime minister.
Ms Rewcastle Brown is the London-based founder and editor of Sarawak Report, a website that has reported intensively on allegations of corruption and illegal logging in the country where she was born to a British colonial police officer. The former BBC journalist, who is married to Andrew Brown, Gordon’s younger brother, said she did not believe that Malaysia had “a chance in hell” of extraditing her from Britain for the alleged offences.
She described the warrant as “irrational” and “counter-productive” as she said it would give her a wider platform to discuss the controversies covered by Sarawak Report, which has been blocked in Malaysia as a “threat to national security”.