In another incident a witness testified that she had seen previous photos of the victim with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, and both the prosecution and the defense leapt to their feet to have the testimony stricken from the record. The same witness also testified that hers and the victim's immigration records showing entry to Malaysia had been mysteriously deleted.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Classified By: Political Section Chief Mark D. Clark for reasons 1.4 (b and d).

1.  (C) Deputy Public Prosecutor Noorin Badaruddin, a member of the prosecution team in the Altantuya murder case (reftel), told Polchief during an informal conversation January 30 that there was almost no chance of winning guilty verdicts in the on-going trial of defendants Razak Baginda, a close advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, and two police officers. 

She described the trial as interminably long.  Nearly seven months after the trial began (but with only 83 days of actual hearings), the prosecution now is presenting its 63rd witness out of an anticipated 80 and the defense has yet to make its case.

(Note: The prosecution notified 132 potential witnesses that they might be called to testify.  End Note.) 

Noorin anticipated the trial would continue for several more months and said that she actively sought excuses to escape from the courtroom monotony.

2.  (C) By all accounts the trial has been a prosecutorial embarrassment from its inception, leading many to speculate that the ineptitude was by design.  On the eve of the trial Malaysia's Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail dropped his lead prosecutors and replaced them with less experienced attorneys.  Similarly, a lead counsel for one of the defendants (Zulkifli Noordin) abruptly resigned before the trial "because of (political) attempts to interfere with a defense he had proposed, in particular to protect an unnamed third party."

Then in the first 30 days the prosecution fumbled through a series of key witnesses whom later had to be impeached for proffering testimony contradictory to their pre-trial statements.  In one case, a police officer testified that police interrogators "tortured and coaxed" her to make pre-trial statements which were untrue. 

Subsequent witnesses testified that police reports and phone records had been changed and that other evidence had been tainted and should therefore be thrown out. 

In another incident a witness testified that she had seen previous photos of the victim with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, and both the prosecution and the defense leapt to their feet to have the testimony stricken from the record.  The same witness also testified that hers and the victim's immigration records showing entry to Malaysia had been mysteriously deleted.

Neither the prosecution nor the defense pursued a line of questioning regarding that testimony.

3.  (SBU) The protracted nature case has led at least one regional newspaper to speculate that "the case is being deliberately delayed to drive it from public view."

Malaysia's daily newspapers rarely mention the case's latest developments, and it is unprecedented in Malaysian judicial history that a murder trial could drag on for seven months and still not give the defense an opportunity to present its case.  Such an environment has led many to conclude that the case was too politically sensitive to yield a verdict before the anticipated general elections.

KEITH (February 2008)

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