Shafee wants Sulaiman to show proof of his appointment

The lawyer for former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak wants former Bar Council chairperson Sulaiman Abdullah to show the court and the defence team the fiat or appointment letter as prosecutor issued to him by attorney-general Tommy Thomas.

Lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah raised the matter before High Court judge in Kuala Lumpur, Justice Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali, saying he raised a similar issue with Gopal Sri Ram's appointment, at almost the end of today's proceeding in the case against Najib.

Shafee said when he was appointed as the DPP in Anwar Ibrahim's Sodomy II case, it was the then DPP Mohd Hanafiah Zakaria who introduced him to the Court of Appeal, after which he stood up in the court.

"A letter was then presented in court to show evidence of my appointment," Shafee said.

The senior lawyer said Anwar objected to his appointment for six times, but he was not removed as the court had the record of the letter of appointment.

In this case, he added, Sulaiman stood up as the prosecutor in the matter without showing any letter.

"I expected Manoj (Kurup, head of prosecution in the Attorney-General's Chambers) to introduce him, as this is the practice by the chambers all over the years."

Similarly, with Gopal Sri Ram, Shafee said, the former federal court judge said he would deal with it.

"Then he showed it to us yesterday, although we are going to proceed with having him (Gopal) removed from leading the prosecution," the lawyer said.

Sulaiman replied that the defence should know of his credentials.

"I did not stand up to ask you to show your certificate (of practice). We know, as officers of the court, that we are qualified persons. We have 10 DPPs behind me," he said.

'Appointment letter classified under OSA'

Sulaiman further said the appointment letter was classified under the Official Secrets Act 1972.

Furthermore, Sulaiman alleged, this move by Shafee was to delay the trial.

Shafee then asked why the letter cannot be shown in this age of transparency in the "New Malaysia".

Lawyer Havinderjit Singh, who appeared with Shafee, then said that Sulaiman's appointment came under Section 379 of Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) while Gopal's appointment was under 376.

If need be, Havinderjit said, a formal application would be made for Sulaiman to produce the document.

Justice Nazlan then asked the parties to deal with it on Oct 31, when mention of the case will be held.

Earlier, Shafee and Sulaiman crossed words over the documents that are to be handed to the defence under Section 51A of the CPC.

Shafee, as he had previously, objected to the handing over of the "documents" by way of a CD-ROM, saying that the documents were not indexed.

He complained that some of the documents could not be read and were not intelligible.

Sulaiman argued that they had asked for pre-trial conference, which the defence refused.

In the end, Justice Nazlan asked parties to sort it out within two weeks for all documents to be given to the defence, and also fixed Oct 31 for case management. -Mkini