Najib’s two bodyguards, who had admitted killing Altantuya and blowing her to bits, were originally released by the Appeal Court because of the appalling mishandling of their original trial (throughout they had been kept hooded to keep their anonymity).
Specifically, the Appeal Court noted, there had been zero attempt to identify a motive as to why these two employees of the defence minister would shoot dead a stranger to themselves. The person who actually had a glaring big motive was their boss, then Deputy PM and Defence Minister, Najib Razak.
Najib and his ‘procurements advisor’ Razak Baginda had been publicly berated daily in the street by a woman who was complaining they had made her pregnant and who claimed to have evidence of their damning involvement in stealing hundreds of millions of ringgit out of a French submarine contract (subsequently proven to be true).
Now that’s a motive.
If Altantuya and her friends had not got evidence on Najib and Baginda, the irate minister and his side-kick could easily have called the police and immigration services to have her sorted out for all this hoo hah shouting outside Baginda’s house. This is what Najib’s bodyguard Azilah originally advised Najib that he should do, according to today’s eplosive statutory declaration (below in full).
However, Altantuya and her friends had made clear they were not going quietly. They had already blurted the whole story out to one PI Bala, hired by Baginda to try and deal with the tiresome group of chanting women, so little doubt what they would have said down at the station when their interviews were recorded on arrest. What Altantuya had told Bala was that she was pregnant with Najib’s child and had helped him negotiate a massive theft of public funds through the bent Scorpene deal.
So, instead of Baginda calling the police Najib called in his own bodyguards, confirms Azliah Hadri, currently on death row. It was they who were sent to Baginda’s house to ‘get rid of’ Altantuya via the bodyguard method of disposal (having picked up guns and weapons grade explosive available only to Najib’s own ministry of defence).
The lady was supposed to simply vanish, of course. However, the entire operation was bungled and had all the hallmarks of a panic response that was ill thought through. The police found the body; traced Azilah’s colleague Sirul’s calls from the scene; spoke to Bala and a cab driver at the scene; broke down Baginda who dissolved into tears and soon got a pretty good picture of what had happened.
At which point lawyer Shafee Abdullah leapt into action for his boss and a trial was put into play in which half the relevant witnesses were not called and the prosecution and the defence were singing from the same tune. Najib was not even called as a witness, let alone a suspect and Baginda was acquitted – but not before his wife revealingly blurted out hysterically in court that it was not her husband who needed to be protected because he wanted to be prime minister.
Everyone in Malaysia could see what was going on and why the two convicted, motiveless bodyguards (forced to wear hoods in court) who did not even know their victim cried out they were “scapegoats” at the end of the trial.
Suspicions were confirmed when PI Bala went public complaining he had not been given a chance in court to give his evidence and provided a detailed statutory declaration spelling out all he had learned from Altantuya and Baginda about her affairs with the two men and her demands for money to keep quiet about the submarines.
Naturally, Bala he was then whisked away having been forced to retract within hours. After he returned a few years later to confirm his story in KL he mysteriously soon died following a hospital checkup on his heart condition.
The world thought all this was fishy, more importantly the Appeal Court had also thought it was fishy. So fishy that the court released the two men shortly after hearing the case following the 2013 election. Cynics might have suspected this was the plan all along – to let these carefully unidentified chaps free once Najib securely in office as an elected PM.
If so, the Federal Court was unamused. The men killed the woman after all – whether or not their motive was merely an inducement of a bit of cash and whether or not someone who ordered it was equally if not more guilty of the crime. In a move that could only happen in Malaysia the acquitted men were de-acquitted and hauled back behind bars to face a death sentence.
That certainly suited Najib were he, as Azilah has now testified, the man who ordered the hit. Behind bars and totally dependent on his threats and blandishments was where he held most control over these potentially loose cannons. After all, remeber Sirul’s early attempts to blackmail him after escaping to Australia and his statements to the media that he could ‘bring down a prime minister’ if he decided to tell all he knew?
The Federal Court ruling made sure these dangerous witnesses were locked up with a death sentence hanging over them. Was future wealth and freedom held out as the distant and tantalising reward for continuing silence as certain evidence suggests?
Till now such conclusions have been speculative, failing proper investigations and a proper trial. Now, however the country’s inevitable suspicions about the Altanuya case have been backed up however by compelling testimony from the man who pulled the trigger confirming that it was his powerful boss, the man with the motive, who told him to do it.
Azilah will place a motion to the Federal Court asking for a review of his case and a re-trial. The Attorney General who will repond is no longer an appointee of Najib Razak. If that trial is granted in the light of the new evidence there will be a new suspect in this murder case, the former prime minister.
Meanwhile, the two bodyguards will have a new defence they did not put forward earlier (owing to the power of their boss who had allegedly told them to keep quiet and wait for him to save them) which is that they were ordered by the Defence Minister to shoot a spy who was a danger to their country.
Baginda would be arraigned as an accomplice to the crime and key witness and a whole raft of new witnesses would be called or be recalled to receive a proper grilling. These would include the chief bodyguard Musa Safri; the friends of Altantuya who reported her missing; Azilah’s girlfriend who assisted in the arrest (also Rosmah’s bodyguard); several police officers; lawyers and judges who were removed and replaced in the course of the case; Rosmah; several staff and acquiantances of Rosmah and Najib who observed evidence of a row at the house over what to do with Altantuya and then evidence of what had happened following her disappearance and also Deepak Jaikashan, a close confidant of the couple at the time who has admitted his involvement in the cover-up on behalf of Najib and Rosmah by getting PI Bala out of the country using threats and bribes.
Jail Not Bail
If there is a trial in prospect to match the stunning impact of 1MDB in Malaysia this would be it. Except, with a crucial difference. As a supect for murder Najib Razak will not be bailed for just a few million ringgit. He will not be allowed to retain his political seat and swan into parliament with outrider escorts wearing fine suits nor tour by-elections calling himself ‘Bossku’. Najib will be placed behind bars and will travel to court each day in a prison van.
Meanwhile, the Altantuya case is not the only murder event in Malaysia where victims have complained that a similar botched investigation and ensuing trial also combined with the element of a motive on the part of Malaysia’s past power couple. Altantuya’s may just be the first skeleton to tumble out of a crowded closet.
Pascal Najadi, son of the former AmBank founder Hussein Najadi, has powerfully argued that one unexplored possible motive behind own his father’s murder (shot dead in the street) was the fact that his father had started taking his concerns to the very top in Malaysia about the use of the bank he had founded to launder billions through Najib’s accounts.
Once again, there is a paid shooter sitting on death row in Malaysia, but the person identified as hiring him by police was let scott free without any further exploration of the motive for this murder back in 2015.
Likewise, there are seven accused ‘gang members’ and an army doctor still locked up in jail over the separate murder of prosecutor Kevin Morais, who drew up the original SRC charges against Najib currently being tried in court. Their trial was abruptly suspended over a year ago after the suspects started to give evidence that the alleged motive, which was to avenge the doctor whom Morais was tasked to prosecute over receiving bribes, was not correct.
Shortly before the trial was suspended one of the accused claimed they were offered RM3.5 by Najib himself to commit the murder. Why the prosecution has now suspended the trial and accused men have been allowed to languish now for years in jail without a trial is cause for concern. Either they can be proven guilty and motive established or they cannot.
It makes for quite a list of grisly deaths where Najib’s name has popped up in the proceedings only to be followed by interferences in the normal processes of a trial.
Read the ful Statutory Declaration made by Azilah Hadri as he entered his plea to the Federal Court for a re-trial October 19th:
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