Commissioners grill inspector over lapses in police procedure

WANG KELIAN RCI | Police inspector Mohd Mossadique Azni struggled to answer a barrage of questions directed at him during the Wang Kelian Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) today.

Taking the stand after the lunch break, he recounted how he had led a 10-man team deep into the jungle near the Thai-Malaysian border on Jan 19, 2015, for a surveillance mission.

This after receiving information on the presence of “human camps” and possible illicit activity there.

However, he said the mission went awry when the people at the camps detected the approaching police presence and fled before he and his team arrived.

When he led that mission, Mossadique said he had already been stationed at the border for four years and had arrested undocumented migrants who slipped through the border “one or two” at a time.

When commissioner Tan Seng Giaw questioned why he had led a large team into the jungle for a mere surveillance mission and not a raid, the inspector answered that it was for “security purposes”.

He also admitted that he had underestimated the size of the human trafficking camps there.

Mossadique’s response upset commissioner Razali Ismail.

“I am not satisfied with what the inspector has said. You knew there was human trafficking (happening at the border) but yet you were not equipped to detect it?

“How could you not suspect that human trafficking was happening?” he asked.

Mossadique reiterated that his only experience up to that point was arresting “one or two” undocumented migrants at a time and that police had not realised that human traffickers were keeping large numbers of people deep in the Wang Kelian jungle.

Tan and Razali then took turns firing questions at the inspector on why the police were not better informed about human trafficking activities and better equipped to tackle them.

Before he could respond to the questions, the RCI's deputy chairperson and former inspector-general of police Norian Mai stepped in and asked Mossadique whether the police’s Special Branch (SB) had ever shared with him information about undocumented migrants crossing the Thai-Malaysian border.

“As far as I know, they did not,” Mossadique said.

Earlier, the inspector had also struggled to answer questions from the panel as to whether police had a standard operating procedure (SOP) for when they arrested undocumented migrants at the border.

He was also asked if he or his officers had been given training on how to process undocumented migrants.

To both questions, Mossadique stayed silent for several minutes before eventually muttering “I am not sure” after the commissioners repeated the questions.

[More to follow] - Mkini