Sirul Azhar the ticking time bomb
Will convicted Altantuya killer blow up Najib? Wait for the Ides of March, says Ariff Sabri
Free Malaysia Today
Convicted killer Sirul Azhar’s sojourn in Australia, and a promised “tell-all” interview with the Malaysian press on Monday, has got tongues wagging about the kind of support he has obtained, and what he may say.
Does he have anything explosive to reveal? Will the former police commando blow up? Will Najib Razak, who has been indirectly linked to the woman, survive the Ides of March?
Questions have been popping up ever since it was revealed that Sirul had quietly left the country in the months before a Federal Court decision on his conviction and death sentence for the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2008.
Fresh demands have been made for the Altantuya case to be re-opened, after Sirul told Malaysiakini last week that he had acted under orders when, with chief inspector Azilah Hadri, he carried out the killing of Altantuya, aged 28, by shooting her in the head and blowing up her body with plastic explosives.
Najib has pooh-poohed Sirul’s insistence that he was merely acting under orders (an aide to Najib was named in his original cautioned police statement but not at the trial) and that the real killer had not been punished. “Utter rubbish,” the prime minister had said.
Now the MP for Raub, Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz, has asked in a speculative article on his blog whether Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s warning about the Ides of March would become a reality.
Ariff questioned why Najib had reacted so pointedly to Sirul’s remarks, as the Attorney-General had previously stated, before Sirul and Azilah were put on trial, that no others were involved.
“Let’s wait for March,” Ariff said. “Let’s see if Dr Mahathir’s warning comes about. Let’s see if Najib can survive after March.”
The “Ides of March”, a phrase from Shakespeare, refers to warning given by soothsayers to Julius Ceasar that senators led by Brutus were conspiring to assassinate him.
In a separate article, lawyer Haris Ibrahim speculates that Dr Mahathir may have helped Sirul to disappear to Australia, and could be the unseen hand behind Sirul’s willingness to reveal more about the murder.
Ariff makes no direct link to Mahathir as Haris does.
