KUALA LUMPUR: Former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said former policeman Sirul Azhar Umar must reveal the extra information he claimed he has regarding the murder of Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006.
Sirul, who was convicted of the murder together with another policeman, recently demanded for a full pardon in exchange for him giving the full story of the murder to the Pakatan Harapan-led government.
However, said Musa, it was improper for Sirul to make such a demand since he was found guilty by the court.
“Anyone who has new information leading to new evidence about the murder must lodge a police report so that the case can be re-opened or that person can meet with a police officer and give his or her statement to police.
“This includes Sirul. If it’s true that he has new information or evidence, then he must reveal it all,” he told the New Straits Times Press yesterday.
On Oct 18, 2006, Altantuya, who was purportedly the translator involved in the negotiation process into the sale of submarines by the French defence company DCNS to the Malaysian government, was killed by two of then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s bodyguards.
Musa has maintained that police investigations into the case previously found no evidence to implicate Najib or his wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, over the assassination, as claimed by certain quarters.
In an interview with MalaysiaKini from Australia recently, Sirul said he was willing to assist the new government “to tell what actually transpired” provided that the government granted him a full pardon.
(The government, in fact, cannot grant any pardon as that falls under the purview of only the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, through the workings of the Pardons Board, of which he heads.)
However, DAP lawmaker Ramkarpal Singh, a lawyer, urged authorities to reject the offer by Sirul and demanded for the latter to come clean with details of the grisly murder more than a decade ago.
He had said the court could commute Sirul’s death sentence to life imprisonment, so that authorities in Australia have no reason not to deport him upon a request for extradition.
(Australia and Malaysia have an extradition treaty but the former does not extradite anyone in cases where the death sentence is in play.)
“There is absolutely no hint of remorse from Sirul in his said interview, particularly when the murder was committed in such a heinous manner,” Ramkarpal had said.
On obtaining a full pardon for Sirul, Musa, who was the IGP when the murder occurred, echoed a similar view as Ramkarpal’s.
“If Sirul wants to come back to Malaysia, his sentence can be lightened, but he can’t be pardoned right away. If he really has new information as he claimed, then police can go to Australia and get Sirul’s statement there,” he added.
Sirul and fellow Special Action Unit member Azilah Hadri were convicted of Altantuya’s murder by the Federal Court in January 2015 and sentenced to death.
Sirul, however, had already managed to escape to Australia and is currently being held in an immigration detention centre there.
Azilah is currently waiting for a hearing on his plea for clemency.
Altantuya was said to have been involved in a sexual tryst with former political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, a close associate of Najib’s.
Razak was acquitted of abetting the murder in 2008 without his defence being called.
In an exclusive interview with the New Straits Times in 2015, Musa defended investigations into the case and said that unless there was new information on the murder, it should not be reopened.
