Will Altantuya’s Murderer Talk in Australia?

By admin-s Last updated Jan 22, 2015

Reporters and lawyers are feverishly trying to get Sirul to talk from his jail cell about who ordered the killing and why.

John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel

The detention in Brisbane, Australia, of Sirul Azhar Umar, one of the two condemned killers of Mongolian beauty Altantuya Shaariibuu, must be sending shock waves through Kuala Lumpur and the unknown parties who ordered her execution in October of 2006.

“This is going to be dynamite,” said a prominent Malaysian lawyer who preferred not to be identified. “There is lots of vibration going on in foot apparel,” a suggestion that top political figures in Kuala Lumpur might be shaking in their boots. Reporters and lawyers are feverishly trying to get Sirul to talk from his jail cell about who ordered the killing and why.

Once a member of an elite bodyguard unit attached to the office of then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak, Sirul was detained in Queensland after Interpol issued a request for his arrest. He apparently fled to Australia last October, according to immigration records. He is now well outside the jurisdiction or protection of Malaysian figures who could conceivably offer him security in return for keeping quiet.

Since the time Sirul and his co-defendant, former police chief inspector Azilah Hadri, were arrested in 2006, every effort has been made in three courts to make sure no names would be mentioned in the context of who ordered the killing of the then-28-year-old Altantuya, a jet-setting party girl and translator who had been the girlfriend of a close associate of now-Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. According to a sworn statement by a private detective who has since died she had also once been the girlfriend of Najib himself.