The Prison Department never received the royal addendum granting Najib Abdul Razak house arrest, said Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
He affirmed today that the department only received instructions on the former premier’s sentence being commuted.
In a press conference, Saifuddin (above) said that on Feb 2 last year, pursuant to the Pardons Board meeting on Jan 29, a letter from the Legal Affairs Bureau was sent to the Home Ministry and the Prison Department.
The letter contained two matters, Saifuddin said, the first being the minutes of the Pardons Board meeting, while the second was instructions to the Prison Department, signed by the then Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah as chairperson of the Pardons Board and witnessed by Federal Territories Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa.
The end of the letter, the minister said, merely pointed out the decision to commute Najib’s sentence by halving his jail time to six years, and reducing his RM210 million fine to RM50 million.
“That’s the letter the Prison Department received, there was no mention of house arrest,” he added.
Asked whether the addendum was included, Saifuddin replied in the negative.
“That (instructions commuting the sentence) is all we received,” he reiterated.
‘There was no order to enforce’
As such, Saifuddin described it as impossible to enforce a house arrest order that was never relayed.
The minister was responding to allegations by Najib’s lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah today that the minister and others had concealed the addendum’s existence.
“We (the Home Ministry) can only implement what instructions we received, what more the order was signed by the chairperson of the Pardons Board (the Agong then),” he said.
The Court of Appeal today granted Najib’s appeal to commence a judicial review at the High Court to compel the government to enforce the alleged addendum.
A letter from the Pahang palace was submitted to the court, which confirmed that the addendum was real.
However, the government’s lawyers pointed out that the matter was not discussed during the Pardons Board meeting on Jan 29. - Mkini
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