Kit Siang mocks Najib’s sumpah laknat
(MMO) – DAP’s Lim Kit Siang mocked former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak today over his plan to use a religious oath to deny claims he directly ordered the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006.
Najib announced his intention yesterday to perform the sumpah laknat tomorrow to emphatically deny former police commando Azilah Hadri’s statutory declaration that he killed the Mongolian on the orders of the former, who was deputy prime minister at the time.
Also, yesterday, news emerged that former Goldman Sachs bank Tim Leissner alleged to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Najib and other Malaysian officials received kickbacks from 1MDB’s issuance of US$6.5 billion in bonds.
“Would Najib make a sumpah laknat to deny the latest allegation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that he was a recipient of kickbacks from bonds raised by former Goldman Sachs executive Tim Leissner for 1MDB in the monstrous kleptocratic 1MDB scandal?” Lim asked today.
The sumpah laknat is a religious oath that Muslims perform as a public demonstration of their innocence, in which they deny the allegations against them while simultaneously seeking divine retribution on their accusers.
It has no legal significance here and its function is limited to affecting public opinion.
Today, Lim asked Najib how seriously he would have treated the sumpah laknat if it had been presented to him as evidence of innocence during his time in power.
“Najib’s sumpah laknat also raises the question as to how many detainees in the death row during the nine years he was prime minister from 2009 to 2018 he would personally have recommended should be commuted to pardon and release if they had taken a sumpah laknatof not being guilty of the crimes they were given the death penalty?”
The DAP lawmaker noted the growing call for a reinvestigation of the 2006 Altantuya murder or at least probes into related statutory declarations, including from the Malaysian Bar.
He then urged others interested in discovering the truth in the case to speak up and call for review of not only the investigation itself but also the prosecution of the case and the trial itself.
Azilah made a statutory declaration that was released this week in support of his application for a review of the Federal Court’s 2015 decision to uphold his conviction.
In 2009, Azilah and another ex-commando, Sirul Azhar Umar, were found guilty of murdering Altantuya in 2006 but were released in 2013 on appeal.
Sirul, who fled to Australia prior to the 2015 Federal Court ruling, previously dangled a “tell-all” in return for a review of his death sentence but the government rejected this.
Najib has been circumstantially linked to the case before but there had been no direct connection until Azilah’s controversial claim.
