Handphone calls traced to Altantuya’s murder scene

The Sun

A 20-second telephone call on the night of Oct 19, 2006, the day Altantuya Shaariibuu went missing, revealed the receiver of the call was located at Puncak Alam, the Mongolian murder trial was told today.

Celcom (M) Bhd’s Special Projects and Investigations Department executive Mohd Firdaous Mohd Omar, 30, testified that the call was made from the mobile phone 012-3723584 to 019-3636153 at 10:43:46pm that day.

The mobile phone number 012-3723584 was registered under L/Cpl Rohaniza Roslan’s name while the 019-3636153 number was registered under Norazila Baharuddin and Chief Insp Azilah Hadri’s name.

Mohd Firdaous, 30, was replying to questions posed by Deputy Public Prosecutor Noorin Badaruddin in the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder trial in the High Court here.

"Does this mean that on Oct 19, 2006, at about 10.43pm, the phone subscriber was at Puncak Alam, on the date and time mentioned?," asked Noorin, to which Mohd Firdaous agreed.

She also showed another transaction, recorded in the 10-page transactions of three mobile phones subscribing to Celcom (M) Bhd’s services.

Under one of the transactions, in which the call lasted 60-seconds, a call was made from Azilah’s handphone to Rohaniza’a mobile phone at 11.28pm on Oct 19, 2006, and the location of the caller was at Puncak Perdana.

In yet another transaction, also on Oct 19, 2006, at about 11.48pm, a 104-second long call was made by Rohaniza to Azilah whose location was identified to be in Kota Damansara.

Noorin told judge Datuk Mohd Zaki Md Yasin, the prosecution will be focusing on about 35 other similar transations involving three other mobile phone numbers.

She then requested Mohd Firdaous and the defence lawyers to go through the more than 35 summarised transactions highlighted by the prosecution which Mohd Firdaous can verify when hearing resumes tomorrow.

Earlier, the spectre of yet another trial-within-a trial had loomed over the trial following an objection raised by a defence counsel over the admissibility and accuracy of the details of several mobile phone numbers tendered in court.

However, judge Datuk Mohd Zaki Md Yasin over-ruled the objection by J.Kuldeep Kumar who co-represents Chief Insp Azilah Hadri, and declared that there was no need for a trial-within-a-trial to be held.

Kuldeep had sought a trial-within-a-trial to decide on the admissibility of the evidence which he had objected to on the grounds that:

• there was non-compliance to the admissibility requirement under the Evidence Act;
• the entries in the document tendered in court was inaccurate, and the accuracy can only be established during cross-examination;
• there were contradictions and inconsistencies in the document, which defies human logic; and
• the document tendered was basically faulty.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Tun Abdul Majid, however, countered that the documents tendered in court as evidence complied with the requirements under the Evidence Act as the details of the mobile phone transactions were obtained from the computer systems of Celcom (M) Bhd, and are deemed to be accurate.

Abdul Majid said the court can call the person in-charge of the computer to verify the details produced in the documents tendered in court, and the accuracy of the evidence adduced can be tested by way of cross-examination.

He said if the court finds the computer generated documents tendered in court are found to be inaccurate, false or had been tampered with, the court can set aside the evidence.

He added that in this instance, it did not involve any statement/s made by an accused person, as previously, but instead a computer generated printout.

Hearing continues.