Azilah exhausts all legal avenues

PUTRAJAYA: Former police Special Action Unit (UTK) personnel Azilah Hadri has failed in his final bid to escape the gallows for the murder of Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006 following the Federal Court’s decision to dismiss his review application.

Azilah, a death row inmate at the Kajang Prison, had filed for a review last year under Rule 137 of the Rules of the Federal Court 1995 and sought for his conviction and sentence to be set aside and for an order of retrial.

As he has now exhausted his legal options, his final option is to petition for a royal pardon.A five-man bench of the apex court, led by Chief Judge of Malaya Justice Azahar Mohamed, unanimously dismissed the application on the grounds that there was no miscarriage of justice in Azilah’s trial at the High Court.The judge said the applicant’s grounds for seeking a review was that the trial had not used the extra evidence he (Azilah) had submitted in the form of a statutory declaration, in which he claimed to have executed the murder on the alleged order of a third party.

But Justice Azahar noted that Azilah had kept silent about this so-called evidence during the investigation, the trial at the High Court, the appeal at the appellate court as well as the Federal Court.

“Clearly in our judgment, the introduction of so-called new evidence is not in accordance with established legal principles, ” he said.

The court also said the finality of legal proceedings was of fundamental importance in criminal justice and there should be no further appeal after the Federal Court.

The court, therefore, had no power to reopen, rehear or re-examine the decision it made dated Jan 13,2015, save for its review power pursuant to Rule 137.

“In our judgment, there were no exceptional circumstances that could call for a review under Rule 137. We therefore dismiss this review application, ” Justice Azahar added.

Azilah filed the review application in December last year together with his 32-page SD, in which he claimed that the order to kill Altantuya came from former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who was deputy prime minister then.

Azilah and another former police commando, Sirul Azhar Umar, were convicted and sentenced to death by the Shah Alam High Court in 2009 for Altantuya’s murder in 2006.However, they were discharged and acquitted by the Court of Appeal in 2013, which allowed their appeal to set aside their conviction and death sentence.

In 2015, the Federal Court overturned the acquittal of the two police commandos and restored the High Court decision that found them guilty of the offence. - Star