MACC officers ‘concocted’ story to protect careers

PKR wants a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamed's death while in MACC custody.

PETALING JAYA: Opposition party PKR is backing a demand by the family members of Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamed that a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) be set up to probe the Customs officer’s death at the KL MACC headquarters.

Party communications director Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said today the exposure made by the RCI on Teoh Beng Hock, who died in a similar situation, reinforces the need for one.

Teoh died while under the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) custody in Shah Alam in 2009.

Nazmi told reporters at a press conference at party headquarters here that the ‘indepth’ posting by Raja Petra Kamaruddin in his blog MalaysiaToday also justified the need for a RCI on Ahmad Sarbaini’s death.

Raja Petra in his posting claimed Ahmad Sarbaini accidentally fell to his death after MACC officers made him stand on the ledge of a window to force a confession out of the Selangor Customs deputy director.

He claimed that MACC investigator, Ahmad Ghani Ali, who allegedly said “it wasn’t me, it was my people” to Ahmad Sarbaini’s widow, had convened a “conference” with his colleagues to “brainstorm and concoct the most plausible story” to protect their careers.

Ahmad Sarbaini was found dead on April 6 after he was believed to have fallen from the pantry on the third floor of the MACC Kuala Lumpur office in Jalan Cochrane and landed on a badminton court on the first floor.

Recently a forensic investigator in the ongoing inquest on Ahmad Sarbaini concluded that the senior customs officer did not jump to his death nor was he pushed from the KL anti-graft office.

Lacklustre response

Apart from convening the RCI, Nik Nazmi who is also the Seri Setia assemblyman, urged the Najib administration to implement the recommendations made by the RCI on Teoh’s death.

He described the government’s response towards the RCI’s findings on Teoh, as ‘lacklustre’.

Teoh was said to have been driven to commit suicide resulting from “aggressive, relentless, oppressive and unscrupulous interrogation” by three MACC officers.

The three officers named were the then Selangor MACC director Hishammuddin Hashim, and enforcement officers Arman Alies and Mohd Ashraf Mohd Yunus.

Opposition leaders have called for the three MACC officers to be charged under Section 304 and 304A of the Penal Code for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

But the police have said that they cannot take action as none of the three had violated the law. All three have been suspended pending an internal investigation into the RCI findings.

MACC, on their part, have said that it will set up a panel to look into reforming its investigative methods.

Guarding the guards

But Nik Nazmi said the panel cannot repair its image if the committee is chaired by the MACC director himself.

“Considering this serious issue (death under MACC custody) has arisen so many times, it is obvious that internal probe is not the solution.

“As the English saying goes: who will guard the guards?” he said.

He also cited the “procrastination” in setting up the RCI on Teoh’s death and claimed that only political pressure had forced the government to convene the commission.

“Only an independent, transparent and fair investigation can clean the name of the late Ahmad Sarbaini and prevent another tragedy like Teoh Beng Hock and Sarbaini from recurring”.