alleged to have written a letter to all UMNO branches in Sabah. The letter purportedly contained directions on the handling of Project IC. Karim claimed that he did not write the letter and that his signature was forged. The judge viewed his bare denial with deep suspicion. The judge presiding the petition, Justice Muhammad Kamil bin Awang, ruled in favour of the petitioner and declared that the 1999 election result for Likas a nullity. He mentioned in his judgment that he had received instructions over the phone to have the petitions struck out without hearing—an instruction which he dutifully ignored. In 2007, the former Sandakan district chief Hassnar Ebrahim made a statement confessing being involved in Project IC. He was a former detainee of the Internal Security Act in 1998. He testified in the petition for the annulment of the Likas state assembly district election in 1999. Hassnar exposed in specific details of the modus operandi of project of which he had witnessed. He mentioned a secret meeting between former Sabah chief minister Harris Salleh and federal minister Megat Junid Megat Ayub in Hong Kong. Hassnar claimed that 130,000 illegal immigrants were given ICs in 1985 alone. He also claimed that the aim of the operation was to increase the Muslim population of Sabah. DR M. It has been said that the project was a secret policy of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, in particular the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), to attain political domination in the state using the votes of these immigrants. The immigrants are picked from those communities which would more closely resemble the Malay culture or those who would most easily be assimilated into Malay culture. Main indicators would be if the immigrants were Muslims and if they speak Malay. It was acknowledged by the judge in the 1999 Likas petition in reference to 'Ops Gembeling', that the target of the operation were the "Malays of Bugis origin". In response to a 2007 Parliamentary Select Committee, popular Malaysian news blog Malaysia Today alleges that UMNO had made a deal with the government of Libya and the Abu Sayyaf militant Islamic group in the Philippines to bring in 1 million new Muslim voters from Philippines into Sabah. Former Parti Keadilan Rakyat vice-president Jeffrey Kitingan alleges that there are 600,000 immigrants with ICs out of an estimated 1.7 million foreigners in Sabah. The estimated population in Sabah in