Police probing Mahathir's asylum offer to Sirul

Police are probing Dr Mahathir Mohamad's offer to secure asylum for wanted former police commando Sirul Azhar Umar, said Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed.

"He has made a public statement, so police will investigate.

"We will investigate first to see if there's an offence and we'll charge him if there is," Nur Jazlan told reporters in the Parliament lobby today.

Dr Mahathir on Sunday revealed that he had spoken to Sirul over the phone and offered to help him obtain asylum in Australia.

The former premier admitted this in an interview with 60 minutes, an Australian current affairs programme, which featured a segment on Malaysia titled ‘Dirty Secrets’.

Mahathir however denied offering Sirul and inducements to tell the truth about the Altantuya Shaaribuu murder.

In January 2015, the apex court overturned Sirul and another former police commando Azilah Hadri’s acquittal over the 2006 murder.

The pair was sentenced to death, but Sirul had fled to Australia by then.

Australian law dictates that a person facing the death penalty in his or her home country cannot be sent back.

Acted under orders

In an exclusive interview with Malaysiakini via telephone in February 2015, Sirul maintained that he had acted under orders and was being made a scapegoat.

Prime Minister Najib Razak had dismissed Sirul's claims as "utter rubbish".

Najib was implicated when his closest ally, political strategist Abdul Razak Baginda, was initially charged with abetting the murder but later acquitted without his defence being called.

Abdul Razak was involved in the multi-million ringgit procurement of two Scorpene submarines when Najib was defence minister and deputy prime minister.

The police had cleared Najib of any involvement and the prime minister had also sworn on the Quran that he did not know Altantuya and that he was not involved in her murder.

Recently, several of videos of Sirul surfaced, in which he denied Najib’s involvement in the case and that Altantuya was pregnant at the time of her death.

Sources familiar with the videos had claimed there would be another video in which Sirul would reveal the names of those who had asked him to implicate Najib, but this has yet to be released. -Mkini