KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 12 — Sirul Azhar Umar, one of the commandos found guilty of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu's 2006 murder, is now a free man in Australia after a High Court there ruled against indefinite detention.

Guardian Australia reported Sirul was one of 92 men released from the country’s detention centres in what human rights lawyers deemed as a landmark ruling that would put an end to a two-decade immigration law that allowed the authorities to detain foreign citizens indefinitely who cannot be deported back.

Sirul’s lawyer, William Levingston, confirmed to the news outlet that Sirul had been released after the high court decision but could not be deported back to Malaysia.

“My client is facing death by hanging in Malaysia for a murder conviction and until the death penalty is abolished by the Malaysian government, the Australian government is unable to deport Sirul Umar due to non-refoulement obligations,” he was quoted saying. - Malay Mail

Altantuya's murder: Malaysian government, former cops ordered to pay US$1.1 million in damages

The lawsuit was filed against former policemen Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar, former political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda and the Malaysian government.


 

Altantuya Shaariibuu's father Dr Shaariibuu Setev. (Photo: Bernama)

16 Dec 2022 01:30PM(Updated: 16 Dec 2022 01:47PM)

SHAH ALAM: The High Court in Shah Alam on Friday (Dec 16) awarded RM5 million (US$1.1 million) to the family of Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu, who was murdered in 2006.

The ruling came after Judge Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera allowed the lawsuit filed by Altantuya's parents, Shaariibuu Setev and Altantsetseg Sanjaa, and their grandsons, Mungunshagai Bayarjargal and Altanshagai Munkhtulga.

The lawsuit was filed against former policemen Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar, former political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda and the Malaysian government.

“I find the plaintiffs have successfully established their case against the first (Azilah), second (Sirul) and third defendants (Abdul Razak)," the judge said during an online proceeding.

“As the fourth defendant (Malaysian government), I find that, by the facts of the law, the fourth defendant, as the employer, is vicariously liable for the unlawful actions of the first and second defendants, which were carried out in the capacities of police officers."

Altantuya, 28, was shot dead and her body was blown up by military-grade C4 explosives in Shah Alam in 2006.

Azilah has been sentenced to death for her murder, while Sirul is in Australia, having fled while on bail in 2014.

Altantuya was said to be the lover of Abdul Razak, who advised former Malaysia prime minister Najib Razak from 2000 to 2008. 

The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit on Jun 4, 2007, claiming that the model's death resulted in them suffering mental shock and psychological trauma. They also sought compensation as well as exemplary and aggravated damages. - cna

Wednesday, 19 October 2016

10 years on ... Altantuya’s remains still waiting for burial


Still no justice for her sensational murder after a decade ...
 10 years on ... Altantuya’s remains still waiting for burial

Where in the world has a foreigner been killed by police officers in a country but the victim’s remains continue to be withheld by the state for more than 10 years?

Only in Bolehland 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) Malaysia can such a matter occur.

It sure looks like Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) federal government has plenty to hide.

Why hold on to Altantuya Shaariibuu’s remains? Is the federal government fearful of what may be discovered from the remains via advanced forensic technology?

And Altantuya’s family is still seeking justice for the murder. Yes, two cops have been sentenced to death for sensationally shooting her dead in the head point blank and had the body blown to smithereens with the use of military grade C4 explosives.

But who ordered the slaying?

Read on for the protracted murder scandal and its effects on Altantuya's family:

"‘THE DARKNESS IS BEYOND IMAGINATION’: A MESSAGE FOR NAJIB & ROSMAH – 10 YEARS & ALTANTUYA STILL WAITING TO BE BURIED

Politics | October 20, 2016 by | 0 Comments


No visitors are welcome in the collapsed world that used to be the thriving family home of Dr Setev Shaariibuu in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

The angry professor says the devastation caused by the still-unexplained murder of his daughter, Altantuya Shaariibuu, 28, by two police officers in Malaysia a decade ago has been too great.

Even relatives may take only a few steps inside to the kitchen, where water drips from a frail ceiling of their rundown, rented dwelling.

Setev explains that his wife has a heart condition due to acute stress and is likely to shout at someone invading their space; while the lives of his two, motherless grandsons are too pathetic to be shown.

“There are windows at home but the darkness is beyond imagination,” he says, of the relentless gloom. “You won’t see any beauty there. It is a hard and dark life… The murderers didn’t only take her life, they destroyed the whole family… They shouldn’t have to live in a world full of tears.”

With clenched fists planted on the desk in front of him, and tensely erect, this expressive Professor of Film Study is explaining why our interview needs to happen in his university office.


It is enough for him to tell of a family still crushed by unresolved grief and still craving answers for a crime still without a known motive and with the source of the killer’s orders still a mystery.

And still needing to “properly” bury Altantuya, who was blown to bits by military-grade explosives wrapped around her body by the two policemen who shot her twice in the head in a forest on the edge of Kuala Lumpur on the late night of Oct 19-20, 2006.

Sensationally, both killers, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, turned out to be members of a police commando unit that protected Malaysia’s top leaders, including then defence minister Najib Razak, now prime minister. Najib has strenuously denied knowing Altantuya or any part of the atrocity.

Today, the motive for the murder and the source of the policemen’s orders remain unknown and Sirul marks time in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney, where he has spent the past 21 months.

Sirul is there because the tourist visa he used to enter Australia in October 2014 had expired early last year, about the same time the Federal Court, the country’s highest court, re-convicted him and Azilah of Altantuya’s murder (They were first convicted and sentenced to death in 2009 but were acquitted in 2013 and released).

“In Mongolian tradition, the ceremony and burial should be done within 49 days after death but we haven’t done her funeral for the past 10 years,” Setev continues, before recalling how a Malaysian lawyer helped them to receive a “small box” of remains sent by the Malaysian government to the Mongolian embassy in Thailand.

The “bits of bone” were cremated at a crematory there, as were some of Altantuya’s personal belongings. The ashes container stayed in a temple at the cemetery for seven years until the storage fees were too much for their fragile finances and were taken home.

They had already sold their apartment to pay for the legal fees, airfares and accommodation needed whenever Setev travelled to Malaysia to try to ensure justice was being done.


“It is disgusting,” he says of the decision forced upon them. “I basically sleep with her remains in my home now. Having her before my eyes is hard. Where is democracy?”

Setev left some of her remains in Malaysia as evidence in case, he hopes, more prosecutions will eventuate.

Meanwhile, although in his retirement age, Setev still teaches. “The life wheel of my family will stop if I die,” he says.

He tells how, at home, his youngest grandson, 14, crawls about the floor because his arms and legs lost function due to an illness in infancy. Altantuya took him to an overseas clinic for treatment and he began to walk with the support of walls.

But Setev says the lad’s condition has deteriorated because “economically and emotionally” he has not been able to do the same.

His oldest grandson, 19, spends most days lying on his bed, while the younger sister of Altantuya is required by Setev to mostly stay in her own home, when not at work: “I provide her food. One is already dead. What if she gets run over by a car?

A go-getter

Setev seizes a chance to talk about Altantuya, the person. He says nobody, including no journalist, have ever asked him about her “true nature” and claims her reputation was wrongly “tarnished” by others.

He tells of a natural-born go-getter who once boasted to him, fatefully: “I’m a girl born in the Year of Horse. I will make noises worldwide” – he explains that Mongolians believe that women born in that Chinese Zodiac year, associated with race and war horses, are destined to become “hard” and “go far”. But she was stopped, permanently, 10 years ago.

A “really fast learner”, she quickly adapted to major change as a first-grade child moving to the former Soviet Union with her translator and teacher mother and father, whose jobs were to assist some of the many Mongolians working and studying in the vast communist state.

Altantuya was speaking Russian within a few months and hosted an International Women’s Day stage show organised by village children. Her teachers praised the high-performing Mongolian girl (photo, fourth from left in middle row).


In arts-rich Petersburg, Russia, she developed a passion for fine art and other classic culture. She loved attending opera and became an enthusiastic collector of vinyl records that remain stacked high in a room of the family home.

Her passion for foreign languages later extended to English, Chinese, some French, Korean and Japanese, apart from her native Mongolian, and was the basis her globetrotting, translating career. “It’s my fault to I let her study so much. Her life would have been different if she had just remained in Mongolia,” Setev laments.

Altantuya was fully “Russianised” when the family returned to Mongolia at the start of the 1990s democratic revolution which ended 70 years of socialism of the Soviet era.

“People, raised under well-controlled socialism were in a shock when suddenly everything became possible for them,” says Setev. But not Altantuya.

Setev recalls how, when most typically gentle and conservative Mongolians were fumbling with new freedoms, she spoke Russian at home and exhibited the “fast, open and direct” traits of a Russian. She was driving a car in Ulaanbataar when female drivers were rare in Mongolia.

But the protective nature of the socialism ingrained in her since childhood led to her death, Setev believes: “We were naïve. We knew nothing of kidnapping, drugs, corruption, and cheating for monetary gain.”

Altantuya was 18 when her first son was born into a brief marriage. “I want to age with my son. He will be growing up when I’m still young,” she once told her father.


Both sons have been deeply damaged by her murder, Setev says: “When the kids grow, they want to call someone mum. Who stopped their rights to call her mum? What can I say to those Malaysians? Really, what can I say?”

After years of schoolyard and other bullying over his mother’s highly publicised murder, the eldest grandson now shuts himself away from the small community of Ulaanbaatar. “A goat baby with no mother would even seek help from a wolf,” says Setev, who once had to move fast to save him from a jail sentence after a street fight.

“He can’t live in Mongolia,” says Setev, who adds that his youngest daughter’s son had experienced “severe outrage” from peers and from his mother’s co-workers.

Setev further tells he lied to his youngest grandson for three years about the murder. He would buy gifts for him and say, “This is from your mum”, but the boy kept asking for her until he finally was told “she will never come home” – so as to explain the meaning of death to a child’s mind. “You have to be responsible,” says Setev.

“Democracy is not a humanitarian society,” he continues. “It is a money-oriented society where money comes first and people second. If there was humanity, people should talk about the kids and help them.

“Why should they talk about Altantuya (now that she was gone)? They only talk about how much money is involved in this case. Where is the integrity? If we are learning a lesson from this society, it is teaching us to get a lot of money by whatever it takes.”

But, he does not want her killers executed. He explains: “The death penalty is an irresponsible act. One should feel sorrow for what one has done throughout his lifetime. Thus, killing is an act of resting that animal. Killing those two murderers is also the act of getting rid of the witnesses.”

Setev firmly believes Sirul and Azilah “just followed their order without knowing what they were really doing” and he fears all key evidence and witnesses, including the two killers, are under threat of vanishing.

“This is a society that is so used to killing people,” he says. “As long as evidence or witnesses disappear, the case is no more, and they think all this would go away and no one would know.”

Convinced that Malaysian authorities “have no interest in resolving the case”, he is counting on the opposition winning office someday soon and having “the integrity, the fairness and the power to makes things right”.MKINI/Malaysia Chronicle"

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

The Ghost of Altantuya continues to haunt Malaysia, 10 years on...


The Ghost of Altantuya continues to haunt Malaysia, 10 years on ...

The ‘Ghost of Altantuya’ continues to haunt Malaysia some 10 years after the Mongolian French translator was sensationally executed by elite cops.

Altantuya Shaariibuu’s father, Dr Shaariibuu Setev, now suspects Mongolia, Malaysia and Australia have colluded to mute the politically sensitive case of an ex-Malaysian policeman who murdered his daughter a decade ago and has lately been held in immigration detention in Sydney.

Altantuya was then only 28 when she was murdered by members of the Royal Malaysian Police Force. (Also read this for context: http://victorlim2016.blogspot.my/2016/10/flashback-10-years-after-sensational.html)

This is what Setev is saying today:

"NAJIB HAS SPUN AN EVIL TRINITY OF DEATH: ALTANTUYA’S DAD ACCUSES M’SIA, MONGOLIA & AUSTRALIA OF COLLUDING TO COVER HIS DAUGHTER’S BRUTAL MURDER

Politics | October 19, 2016 by | 0 Comments


Dr Shaariibuu Setev suspects Mongolia, Malaysia and Australia have colluded to mute the politically sensitive case of an ex-Malaysian policeman who murdered his daughter a decade ago and has lately been held in immigration detention in Sydney.

Setev is a university professor of film study in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

His eldest daughter, Altantuya Shaariibuu, 28, a globetrotting translator and mother of two sons, was killed overnight on Oct 19-20, 2006, by two Malaysian police officers.

She was shot twice in the head before being wrapped in high military grade C-4 plastic explosive and blown to pieces in a forest on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. The motive for the crime and the source of the policemen’s orders remain unknown.

The killers, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar (photo, middle), were members of an elite police commando unit that provided bodyguards for Malaysia’s top leaders, including then Defence Minister Najib Razak, now prime minister.

Sirul has been in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney for the past 21 months, after he was picked up for an expired tourist visa. Government officials have made no comment when asked if it was unusual for a person to be held for so long over an expired visa. Nor have Australian officials linked – at least not publicly – Sirul’s detention to a murder conviction and death sentence that was unusually passed on him in absentia in Malaysia last year.

Australia has a policy embedded in its Migration Act that prevents people being extradited to any country where they would face the death penalty. When asked if the policy is relevant to the case, there has been no official comment.

“It looks like Mongolia, Malaysia and Australia have made a deal to be silent about this case. No one is making a noise. Isn’t it obvious?” an emotional Setev said in his university office.


“The Mongolian government is doing nothing. The Mongolian minister of justice now runs away from me. If he sees me walking through this door, he goes out the other door.”

In a message sent on Monday, Setev added that he thought that the three governments were waiting for time to pass so that the case against Sirul could somehow be dropped in the future.

When approached earlier, a spokesperson for Australia’s Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, offered no comment on Setev’s tri-nation “deal” suspicion. The federal attorney-general, George Brandis, whose office handles extradition matters, did not respond when the same question was sent to him via his staff.

Altanatuya was murdered shortly after flying to Kuala Lumpur to face a married political analyst who reportedly had abruptly ended a romance they started in 2004. The analyst, Abdul Razak Baginda, was a friend and confidante of Najib, who has strongly denied ever meeting Altantuya or having any part in her murder.

The trial heard she made numerous failed attempts to see Abdul Razak (photo) at his home and office. Two days before her murder she angrily called from the street for him to come out of his house. On the evening she died, she returned alone in the belief he would talk to her. Instead, police arrived and took her away – ultimately to her death.

Later, in the forest, with Sirul and Azilah, she reportedly pleaded she was pregnant. Setev doubts that, saying “a person can come up with anything to save their life. I see it as her last chance.”

Abdul Razak was later charged with having abetted her murder, but was acquitted at a trial in 2008 because the prosecution did not have a prima facie case. No evidence was given. Sirul and Azilah both pleaded not guilty but were convicted after a 159-day trial, including long adjournments. Sirul only read out a prepared statement, in which he was reported to have tearfully claimed to be “a black sheep who has to be sacrificed” to protect unnamed people.

Both men were acquitted by the Court of Appeal in 2013.

Sirul became Australia’s problem after he managed to leave Malaysia – his passport had not been confiscated – and enter Australia on a tourist visa in October 2014, just when Malaysia’s highest court, the Federal Court, was hearing an appeal against the men’s acquittal. Three months later, in January 2015, the Federal Court reinstated their convictions and death sentences and Azilah went onto death row. About that time, Sirul was picked up in Queensland, Australia, where he was staying with relatives on his tourist visa.

Sirul last year applied for a protection visa to allow him to stay in Australia but officials say privacy issues prevent comment on any such matters.


Rumour has circulated for years that Altantuya died because she tried to capitalise on inside knowledge – gained as a translator – of allegedly corrupt negotiations for Malaysia to buy two French-built submarines, by blackmailing Abdul Razak for US$500,000.

Her family’s Malaysian lawyer, Ramkarpal Singh, rejects the gossip, saying she met Abdul Razak two years after the negotiations, which did not arise during the long murder trial. The story was “full of holes” and could not be connected to the case, Ramkarpal said.

According to a report of police testimony by Malaysiakini in 2007, a “disturbed” and “pressured” looking Altantuya went to a police station earlier on the day of her murder to file a self-typed report in which, in broken English, she repeatedly expressed fears for her life.

She wrote, “I’m just a normal girl trying to meet my lover who lied to me and promised many things but now (he) want(s) to put me in jail or kill (me). Only reason I’m here (is) because he ruined my life with lies… but now (he is) trying to scare me and kill me… I really understand he doesn’t love me any more… I want to go back safely.” She was dead that night.

Malaysiakini also told in 2007 how the trial heard a letter in her handwriting was found in her hotel room after her death. In it, she admitted having threatened to harm Abdul Razak’s daughter, and regretted having “bothered” and “blackmailed” him, without specifying how. But she also wrote, “I’m (a) nice person. I can’t hurt someone but (Abdul Razak) is a powerful person, he (has) money (and) he (has) connection (to the) police (and the) government… If he didn’t promise me, I would (have) never come from far away to Malaysia.”

No move to extradite Sirul


Meanwhile, her father, Setev, is further angered by Sirul being held in the relative comfort of immigration detention, instead of in a prison. “Why would they happily keep this murderer there?” he asked.

“He has everything he needs… the Internet, phone, (relative) freedom, a kitchen… Imagine a person who is asking to live in your country is sitting next to a murderer. Is it right? Detention centre is not jail.”

In January, Setev asked the National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia to help him have Sirul extradited to Mongolia – where the death penalty was abolished last year – to serve a prison term. The Mongolian body’s letter to Australian Human Rights Commission president, Professor Gillian Triggs, brought a reply that she could do nothing.

Around that time, Mongolia’s state prosecutor told Setev there was no legal possibility for his plan so he abandoned it, but he pressed on “for justice”. On June 15, he hand-delivered to Australian embassy officers in Ulaanbaatar a letter that supported Australia’s stance against the death penalty, but argued that Sirul should be in a prison. At last report, Canberra had not replied to him.

Meanwhile, Ramkarpal, the family’s lawyer, and also a member of the Malaysia’s opposition Democratic Action Party, says he has raised the question of Sirul’s extradition “many times’, in Parliament and with the attorney-general.

Despite the government’s repeated assurances that it would move to extradite Sirul, it has not yet done so and “there has been no satisfactory explanation for a year now”, Ramkarpal said.

He acknowledged that Australia, due to its death penalty policy, was “extremely unlikely” to extradite Sirul but he believed the Malaysian government was bound by its repeated assurances to try.

Ramkarpal (left in photo) said Sirul’s extradition would require court proceedings in Australia, even if his death sentence had been commuted, and that could be concerning for some parties in Malaysia.

“A lot of things would have to be revealed in extradition proceedings (and) Sirul might disclose matters which have not been disclosed in the past in order to absolve him of the predicament that he faces.


“And perhaps they don’t want him back in Malaysia because he might raise all sorts of allegations in his clemency petition. It’s all speculation.

“Sirul is hopeless. I think he’s lost all credibility. He’s said things which are bizarre, to say the least, and if it comes down to a question of believing his credibility, I don’t think he’s going to go very far. (But) anything he said (during extradition proceedings) would make headlines all around the world.”
Ramkarpal said the situation could have been avoided had the Malaysian Federal Court postponed the proceedings that led to Sirul’s re-conviction in January last year. Sirul was an acquitted man up to that point and the court had the power to delay until he returned to Malaysia. And if satisfied he was evading return, it could have issued a warrant for his arrest.

“Now, if that had been the case, there would not have been a conviction or a death sentence against him at that point in time, and the Australians would very likely have sent him back,” Ramkarpal added.

Meanwhile, despite wanting Sirul and Azilah to be punished, Setev does not want them executed.

“The death penalty is an irresponsible act,” he said. “One should feel sorrow for what one does throughout his lifetime. Thus, killing is an act of resting that animal. Killing those two murderers is also the act of getting rid of the witnesses.”
– M’kini/Malaysia Chronicle"