Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Murder He Wrote

Hantu Laut

The murder he wrote in a "Statutory Declaration" based on hearsay could not be the basis for a court proceeding.

Anyone with ill intent could have signed a farcical statutory declaration.

Statutory declaration is not 'gospel truth' as the opposition and pro-opposition media made it out to be.

I don't see the point of writing about the issue anymore other than sensationalising what was already a dead horse.

Anyway, enjoy "The Murder He Wrote"
Written by Our Correspondent
FRIDAY, 05 NOVEMBER 2010
ImageThe episode of a sensational killing of a Mongolian translator appears to be about finished

The closing of a case earlier this week by Malaysia's attorney general over allegedly false statements by a private investigator that tied Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to the 2006 murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu literally lets unknown persons close to the prime minister get away with murder.

The closure of the case appears to write the final chapter in one of Malaysia's most sensational murder cases, one involving a gruesome death, intrigue in high places, more than 100 million euros in alleged bribes and a trial that appeared to be rigged to keep prosecutors as far as possible away from Najib, then the deputy prime minister, and his wife, Rosmah Mansor.

The private investigator, P Balasubramaniam, was hired in 2006 by Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib's best friends and a defense analyst from the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre think-tank, to attempt to keep Altantuya away from Baginda because he had jilted her. She was demanding revenge and US$500,000 for her role as a translator in the sale of French submarines to Malaysia. A French prosecutorial team continues to probe the sale of the subs to Malaysia and whether kickbacks were paid to top French and Malaysian politicians.

In July of 2008, as the trial droned on, Balasubramaniam issued a statutory declaration alleging that Najib, then the deputy prime minister, was involved in the murder, only to retract the entire contents of the declaration a day later and issue a second saying he had made the first under duress (Note:
Both declarations can be found here).

Balasubramaniam's lawyer, Americk Sidhu, denounced the closing of the case, saying that if the supposedly false statements were investigated thoroughly by police, they would have led to the conclusion that people close to Najib were involved in the murder.

De facto Law Minister Nazri Aziz, in a written statement to parliament, said the case was closed because Balasubramaniam had given conflicting statutory declarations, and that anyway, they didn't affect the trial of two of Najib's personal bodyguards and Abdul Razak Baginda, which ended in April of 2009 after a 159-day trial in which the bodyguards were sentenced to death. They are appealing the verdict, with suspicions running high that they will somehow be given their freedom in exchange for their silence on whoever ordered them to kill the woman.

"Although there are contradictions between the two statutory declarations, the contradictions do not affect the outcome of the trial of Altantuya," Nazri said. "Moreover, the individual (Balasubramaniam) is still believed to be abroad." Nazri added that the decision to close the case was made after "careful consideration" of the results of the police probe and witness statements.

Although the two bodyguards were convicted of the crime, Baginda was acquitted under controversial circumstances without having to put on a defense. He then hurriedly left the country for England, where he has remained ever since. One of the two bodyguards said in a cautioned statement that they had been hired to commit the killing and were to be paid RM100,000 to do it. But the statement was never introduced into the marathon trial and never was anybody asked who had done the hiring or made the payment offer.

The 27-year-old Altantuya, the translator in some phases of the billion-dollar purchase of French Scorpene submarines that netted Baginda's company €114 million in consulting fees, was shot in the head and her body was blown up with explosives in a patch of jungle near the suburban city of Shah Alam. Before she died, she told Balasubramaniam she had been promised US$500,000 for assisting in the submarine transaction.

In the bodyguard's cautioned statement, it emerged that Altantuya, almost with her last words, told her two assailants that she was pregnant and begged them not to kill her. That has led to speculation that her body was blown up with C4 explosives to hide any DNA evidence of who the father might be.

Balasubramaniam, who remains somewhere in Chennai, has continued to insist loudly that Razak Baginda, who is married, had told him that the translator had been Najib's sexual companion before the then-deputy prime minister passed her on to Baginda because it wouldn't look good for a prospective prime minister to have a girlfriend.

Read more..

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

How convenient to just close off a murder case and save some people's skin. Attribute the murder to 2 hitmen who have no motive whatsoever and hopefully the public will soon forget about the gruesome murder. That is justice in Malaysia. Even some lawyers will accept the verdict.

Piurple Haze said...

The following should form enough of a basis to reject the AG's decision, I would think :-

+++

OPEN LETTER TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

Dear Tan Sri,

My name is Balasubramaniam a/l Perumal.

I think you may have heard of me.

I was Razak Baginda’s private investigator hired by him to protect him from his ex girlfriend Ms. Altantuya Shaaribu (deceased), sometime in 2006.

Remember you charged him for her murder but he got off. Instead, two of the Prime Ministers body guards got convicted. Stranger things have happened, I am sure you would agree.

But I digress. Let me come to the point.

I have been made to understand that you have decided to close the case involving 2 statutory declarations I signed sometime at the beginning of July 2008 in Kuala Lumpur.

The contents of these statutory declarations were diametrically opposed. Both could not have been true and therefore one of them was false. I trust that makes sense to you.

The police, I believe, have investigated the circumstances surrounding the making of these 2 statutory declarations under s.199 of the Penal Code, for an offence which carries a sentence of 3 years imprisonment and a fine. This is not a trivial offence.

The police must have interviewed my lawyer Americk Sidhu, his secretary, the Commissioner of Oaths who attested my signature and a variety of other witnesses you have mentioned who were somehow intrinsically interwoven in the construction and affirmation of both statutory declarations, one way or another.

It has therefore come as a great surprise to me to discover that you have been unable to decipher any wrongdoing from the enormous amount of evidence the police must have been able to accumulate from their investigations.

cont'd ....

Purple Haze said...

Please permit me to assist you.

Firstly may I suggest that you re-open this file immediately.

I will make it easy for you.

Let me admit to you that I did sign a false statutory declaration. Yes. I did. I signed a false statutory declaration.

It was the second one, not the first one.

The first one was entirely truthful.

The second one was a complete pack of lies. I admit this.

This statutory declaration was prepared by some unknown person(s) and I was forced by very thinly veiled threats and intimidation to sign it.

I have already made this known to the world at large and I am surprised your office has not picked this up as yet. Everyone else has.

If you are unable to ascertain this information which I have just provided to you directly, please feel free to contact me at this email address bala.p.i@hotmail.com and I shall forward to you a copy of the video recorded interview I had in the presence of my lawyers in Singapore last November, and a copy of the transcript thereof.

Otherwise you can find this information on all the blogs worth reading (such as Raja Petra’s ‘Malaysia Today’) and also on ‘YouTube’. ( Just type in ‘PI Bala’ into the search column and you will be surprised what comes up).

So you may now consider charging me for making the false 2nd statutory declaration after the clues I have given you.

I do however reserve the right to plead not guilty to the charge as I believe I have a very good defence.

Your prosecutors will also have to make sure they call all the necessary witnesses to prove their case against me. These witnesses will have to include the following personalities:

(i) a lawyer named Mr. Arunampalam a/l Mariam Pillai (who coincidentally does legal work for Deepak Jaikishan and Rosmah Mansor’s personal companies).

(ii) a Commissioner of Oaths (Zainal Abidin Bin Muhayat) who works in the office of M/s Zul Rafique and Partners (Advocates & Solicitors) and who attested my signature when he came to the room in which I was being held at the Hilton Hotel Kuala Lumpur.

(iii) Deepak and Dinesh Jaikishan ( very good friends and confidantes of Rosmah Mansor).

(iv) Datuk Nazim Razak (younger brother of the Prime Minister), and his wife.

(v) ASP Suresh (a suspended police officer formerly attached to the IPK HQ KL).

(vi) Officers from the Immigration Department Damansara (who assisted in obtaining urgent passports for my family).

(vii) A host of journalists and reporters who were present in the lobby of the Prince Hotel Kuala Lumpur when a lawyer called Arunampalam released my 2nd statutory declaration without my permission.

These are just some of the witnesses I can think of but I am sure you know how to do your job so that should be no problem. I don’t want to be accused of trying to teach an old dog new tricks.

If for some strange reason my defence is called, I will also be able to provide witnesses to support what I have to say. I need not disclose who these witnesses are at this stage and I am sure you know that as well.

I shall now wait for the charge against me to be laid.

I will be more than happy to return to Malaysia to defend myself but you will have to ensure that my safety is guaranteed as there are some people who would prefer that I was not around.

Best regards,

Balasubramaniam a/l Perumal

Anonymous said...

HL,

If today, I held a press conference
and subsequently printed in the media all over the world, saying that you HL had played a part in the murder of a young girl, and you very well knew that this is a lie , an attempt to smear your good reputation.

What would be your response ? Ignore me ? or seek justice to clear your name and punish me legally for the damage I had done to your good reputation ?

Anonymous said...

Agree with you. In fact, it shouldn't have even been raised in your blog at this time, when a host of bloggers had already written about the questionable nature of Bala's SD and of Bala himself last year.

Read especially Gopal Raj Kumar's excellent analysis, and another by KTemoc (if you and other commentators haven't done so).

It's fine to write an open letter to the AG but the question remains (and this has been put repeatedly to the accusers): WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE? The cold, hard evidence, not unsubstantiated hearsay. Until now - and it has been quite a long time - no one has come up with such evidence. Saying "...I shall forward to you a copy of the video recorded interview..." or referring to "...information on all the blogs worth reading..." are not evidence. If someone wants the AG to reconsider, then lay bare the hard, irrefutable evidence. In this internet age, no one is stopping him from doing so.

So is it any wonder or surprise that the AG has now decided to close the case?

SM said...

Bro HL,

We ALL know that's something is not right here!
Even if you discredit PI Bala's SDs, why would two Police Officers (i.e. PM Najib's Bodyguards) kill a grilfriend of his (PM's) friend?
For fun? for kicks? Come on...comeone "higher" up orederde the killings! That at least is for sure!