RCI + inquest = ‘big, big mess’
By Teoh El Sen, FMT
PETALING JAYA: The Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into Teoh Beng Hock’s death, which released its findings in a report last Thursday, has created a “big legal mess” by generating more questions than answers, said prominent human rights lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar.
Malik, who represented the Selangor government during the inquest and RCI, said rather than serving its original function to bring a closure to the issue, there are now different conclusions by the RCI and inquest.
“What has resulted is a big, big, mess. We have now a coroner’s decision and a RCI’s, which are saying different things. In law, the coroner’s findings is the determinative one,” the National Human Rights Society president told FMT.
Malik said the three Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers – Negri Sembilan MACC director (then Selangor MACC deputy director) Hishamuddin Hashim and two enforcement officers Mohd Anuar Ismail (then the investigating officer) and Mohd Ashraf Mohd Yunus, who are being internally investigated for allegedly driving Teoh to suicide – would most probably make the same argument (that the RCI finding is inferior to a court finding) if they were brought to court.
“Both findings (RCI and inquest) are inconsistent. The inquest ruled out a suicide and said there were insufficient evidence to come to a finding of homicide. It also accepted that there were pre-fall injuries on Teoh, but the RCI totally ignored all that,” said Malik.
Malik said before the Selangor government and lawyers of Teoh’s family decided to pull out of the RCI, they suggested and raised concerns over the “dual” findings that would eventually emerge but their arguments fell on deaf ears.
“The RCI then should have stood down until the outcome of the revision (on the inquest) had been done away with. Or, the Attorney-General should have withdrawn his application to revise the inquest decision to push for a suicide finding and all parties to start off on a clean slate. But that was never decided on,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the A-G, who recommended for both a revision and most probably also advised the government to hold the RCI, was asking for two different sides,” he said.
“Also, the RCI decided to ignore all the evidence in the inquest and reboot the whole case… and it seems that somehow everyone got a second chance to restate their case. They (the commissioners) should not have done that; (RCI chairman) James ( Foong) could have found a way to include the coroner’s findings,” he added.
‘There’s no certainty’
Malik expressed his disappointment that the RCI now gave rise to more uncertainty than definitive answers.
“Where do things stand right now? There’s no certainty. What we have now is a whole mess of uncertainty,” he said.
“Has the RCI served its function? From the very beginning, the decision not to hold a RCI before an inquest was ill-conceived, and having a RCI as a knee-jerk reaction to public anger was also not well-thought out,” he said, adding that the original intention of having a RCI was because of public anger and lack of confidence in the inquest’s findings.
“The RCI was more of a political resolution rather than a legal one,” he said.
