Court to rule on Najib’s move on ‘home detention order’ on June 5
Published on: Wednesday, April 17, 2024
By:
FMT, Ho Kit Yen
Former prime minister Najib Razak is currently serving his sentence at Kajang prison and will be released on Aug 23, 2028.
Kuala Lumpur: The High Court here has fixed June 5 to rule on whether to allow Najib Razak to proceed with his bid to compel the government to produce a “supplementary order” purportedly issued by the former king.
The purported order allegedly allows the former prime minister to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest.
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Lawyer Shafee Abdullah told reporters this after the hearing in chambers before Justice Amarjeet Singh, which members of the public were not allowed to attend.
Shafee claimed this was the “first case” where such an order was allegedly made by the king but not made known to the individual involved.
He added that a person had affirmed an affidavit concerning the supplementary order.
“I cannot name the person (attesting the affidavit) who confirmed seeing the (addendum) order,” he said, adding that the affidavit had been sealed by the court and could not be accessed by anyone else.
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“If you (journalists) want to print it, you take the risk,” he said when asked if the affidavit’s contents could be made public.
Shafee also said his team had sent seven letters to ministers and government departments asking them to confirm whether the supplementary order existed, but “they never answered”.
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In his application filed on April 1, Najib claimed that then Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah had issued the supplementary decree during the Federal Territories Pardons Board’s (FTPB) meeting on Jan 29, a day before his term ended.
The FTPB is headed by the king and consists of five members: the attorney-general, federal territories minister and a maximum of three others appointed by the king.
However, Najib alleged that the “addendum order” was not announced by the board on Feb 2.
“The respondents’ failure to confirm the existence of the supplementary decree and the applicant’s (Najib) request to be served with it, along with the subsequent inaction by the prisons department to execute the said decree, is irrational,” he said.
Najib also alleged that the government was in contempt for not executing the supplementary decree.
The former Umno president wants the court to compel the government to execute the supplementary decree, if it exists, to place him under house arrest.
On Feb 2, the FTPB halved Najib’s prison sentence in his SRC International case from 12 years to six and reduced his fine from RM210 million to RM50 million.
Najib, 70, is currently serving his sentence at Kajang prison and will be released on Aug 23, 2028.
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