UK newspaper Daily Mail reported that Ahmed Hadi, a 47-year-old electrician from London, was arrested three days after arriving in Malaysia with his wife and two daughters on Dec 4.

He said his ordeal began when a payment machine refused to accept either of his credit cards as he and his family attempted to leave a car park in Batu Ferringhi, Penang.

Unable to pay the RM7 charge, he pressed a button to request assistance. He claimed that despite having a 10-minute long conversation with a parking attendant, the matter was not resolved.

Hadi said he then gently lifted the plastic barrier only for it to “cave in like paper”, according to the news portal.

Two days later, he was called into a police station, where he was questioned for two hours about the “barrier he had broken” and was duly arrested and jailed.

Hadi said he appeared in court a day later but the case was not settled as police were given more time to investigate the alleged offence. In the meantime, his wife called the British consulate and secured the services of a lawyer.

According to the Daily Mail, she paid three guarantors to bail her husband at a cost of about RM12,500, plus another RM5,600 to the lawyer, who met with the car park owner in early January and agreed to Hadi paying RM1,000 to cover the cost of repairing the barrier.

He is due to appear in court again on Feb 17 (tomorrow) for reasons he says remain unclear.

Hadi and his family left the UK in August and spent three months in Thailand before travelling to Malaysia at the beginning of December.

The Daily Mail also reported that the British high commission in Kuala Lumpur did not respond to its requests for comment.

Police have confirmed the existence of the case against Hadi, when contacted, and said Penang police chief Hamzah Ahmad will issue a statement on the matter soon.