Prosecutor mulls reopening murder case linked to Najib
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s top prosecutor will look into reopening the case of a murdered Mongolian woman allegedly linked to former premier Najib Razak, as the victim’s father says he’s pinning his hopes on the country’s new government to find justice.
Two former police guards for Mr Najib had been convicted of the 2006 murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu.
“Everybody knew that it just did not make sense for the two of them to be solely culpable,” AttorneyGeneral Tommy Thomas said in a Friday interview. “So we knew that the story was incomplete.”
The courts that sentenced the two men to death had grappled with their lack of motive, while Azilah’s recent statement indicates there may in fact be a reason for the murder, Mr Thomas said. “It’s more for the police to investigate and we will look into it,” he said, when asked if he will reopen the case.
One of the convicted men, Azilah Hadri, is seeking a retrial after penning a sworn statement accusing the former prime minister of ordering him to covertly arrest and destroy her because she was a foreign spy and a threat to national security. Mr Najib has denied any involvement. On Friday, he made a religious oath that he didn’t give the order and had never met her.
The prosecutor’s stance will be a relief to Shaariibuu Setev, who has spent more than a decade seeking closure over his daughter’s death. He is campaigning for Malaysia to commute the men’s sentences via a plea deal so that Australia, where one of the men had fled to seek asylum from the death penalty, would agree to bring them together to tell what he says could be the true story behind the murder.
Altantuya was a linguist who spoke Russian and Chinese, as she grew up studying in Russia and Mongolia, before travelling to China to study economics, Mr Shaariibuu said.
Witnesses said in 2007 Altantuya worked as a translator and was privy to the government’s purchase of Scorpene-class submarines, which is now the subject of investigations by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and French authorities.
Altantuya died in Malaysia after being led to the jungle by the two convicted men. She was shot and then blown up using C-4 explosives.