Malaysian (in)justice belies belief. We have seen things here that defy the imagination of even the wildest storyteller.
I would like to start by examining in detail the statement released by the Attorney-General’s Chambers with regards to the alleged “suicide note” left by Teoh Beng Hock.
I shall attempt to retell the narrative this press statement suggests, in a more chronological order. The two main parties involved are the police and the AG’s chambers (yeah, think “Law and Order”). I must note that this account is based only and entirely on the official press statement from the latter.
So, their version seems to go thus: The investigating officer in Teoh’s case, ASP Ahmad Nazri Zainal, finds the note in Teoh’s bag on July 17, 2009, after the death. He does not understand the Chinese written on it and proceeds not to do anything about it until around October 7.
On October 7, ASP Ahmad Nazri approaches the AG’s chambers, and tells them something to this effect: “Hey, are you interested in this letter? I was recently told by a psychiatrist that suicide victims usually leave a suicide note, so I went back to look through his bag after that, and then found this.”
(Of course if the AG’s press statement is to be believed, he said “psychiatric” and not “psychiatrist” — a mistake on either part is equally plausible)
So the AG goes “WTF?” and promptly has the document sent to forensic document examiners on October 9 and 20. Based on their report, he then goes: “This doesn’t seem authentic; and if we bring up something like this two months after the death, people will think it’s fake. Best leave it be, no one needs to know about it.”
Now, fast forward to this last week.
The AG is now saying: “Hey, guess what? That Ahmad Nazri guy? He just confessed that *actually*, he did in fact find the note on July 17, 2009, and not later as previously indicated. He just, you know, didn’t know what it was all about. Yeah. So since he’s now telling us that he found it there and then, and not some time later as he originally told us (which we are writing off as just an honest mistake, really), we figured this is the right time to let the coroner and the public know.”
Were it not for the constraints of professional column writing, I would at this point insert a face represented by two upper case O’s separated by a full stop, to represent my disbelief.
Conversations
Let’s take a quick recap of the irregularities here.
First of all, ASP Ahmad Nazri is quite simply either lying or possessed of an incompetence that defies reason.
Even if we were to take his words at face value, they would have us believe that the cops, in such a high profile case, did not in fact have every single document in Teoh’s bag scrutinised with the utmost of diligence.
If they did not do this, then I suppose it is less of a surprise that investigations into murders like Altantuya Shaariibuu’s seem to end in such unlikely conclusions.
Secondly, why is ASP Ahmad Nazri going to the AG and telling him tales? According to this story, the major reason the AG did not bring this up back in October last year was because this note was allegedly not found on or around July 17, but considerably later.
Going by the press statement, the huge decision not to reveal the note was made after a conversation last year that may have gone like this:
AG: “Eh, you sure you didn’t find this on July 17?”
ASP Ahmad Nazri: “Err. Yeah.”
AG: “OK. Like that, we won’t tell anyone about this then.”
ASP Ahmad Nazri: “Err. OK.”
If your head has stopped spinning, let us then fast-forward again to recent weeks. Now, we are made to believe that a conversation along these lines transpired:
ASP Ahmad Nazri: “Err. Boss. You remember last year when I said I didn’t find that note on July 17?”
AG: “Yeah?”
ASP Ahmad Nazri: “Err. Yeah. Actually, right, I did find it on July 17.”
AG: “What? Really? Are you sure?”
ASP Ahmad Nazri: “Err. Yeah.”
AG: “Hmm. Well. Alright then. In that case, we better go ahead and make it public then, shall we?”
ASP Ahmad Nazri: “Err. OK.”
And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen — Malaysian Law and Order.
Clearly you will think I’m being glib, but I do earnestly invite you to read the AG’s press statement for yourself, and see whether my “re-enactments” veer too far from what they would have us believe.
What’s really happening?
For my money, I reckon this is all a load of hogwash.
Given the pressure everyone was under, there is absolutely no way that a suicide note that had even the merest hint of authenticity would have been kept under wraps. Anything that might even have caused a semblance of reasonable doubt in the minds of those enraged at Teoh’s death would have been exploited ad nauseam.
This fairytale the AG seems to be spinning is rife with inconsistency, and can only be described as what we have come to expect from the man who first tried to convict Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim of sodomy over 10 years ago. Now, as then, the things they expect us to swallow go beyond insulting.
How could a policeman worth even a shred of integrity be either so incompetent or be deliberately misleading the AG himself?
Furthermore, if the AG feels that the authenticity of the note is suspect, then the time the note was purportedly would have scant bearing on whether to release it to the inquest and public.
After all, what the AG’s press statement is actually implying is that he originally suspected the police of fabricating the note, or at the very least, that the note was planted by someone.
Now, some nine months later, he wants us to believe that ASP Ahmad Nazri’s convenient “owning up” as to when exactly he found the note (whether we have anything more than his word to go on, we can hardly say) is sufficient grounds to alter his position with regards to whether the note is fit to be showed to the court.
A more plausible explanation seems to be that the AG is desperately grasping at straws — what more with Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand’s testimony on the horizon. Do they seriously take us for such fools?
Sadly though, no sooner do those words appear on my screen do I realise how clearly they do.
A history of judicial rot
This all begins with Umno Baru and Tun Salleh Abas. It continues unabated through Sodomy I and Sodomy II.
Only this week, the Federal Court upheld the Court of Appeal ruling that quashes a High Court decision that found activist Malek Husin’s 1998 detention under the ISA unlawful.
Reports state that Malek testified that while detained, he “was stripped naked in an air-conditioned room, blindfolded during interrogation, and physically assaulted up to 60 times, beaten until he was unconscious, forced to drink urine and subjected to sexual abuse.”
Lawyers throughout the nation are understandably enraged at this latest in a growing trend of justice frustrated in the upper courts. The most prominent similar example was the case of Perak, where the High Court found in favour of ousted mentri besar Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin, only to find its decision immediately overturned by the Court of Appeal.
Given this recurring pattern, we are confronted with the question of which individuals make up the bench in the appealleate court, and how they got there. Judges, after all, are still human beings, and much as we would like, we cannot assume all would have the same inclinations given the legal merits of a particular case.
In the question of promotions, the elevation of Gani Patail, Musa Hassan and Augustine Paul – all key players in Sodomy I – to apex positions in their profession have aroused the suspicions of many with regards to meritocracy and promotions.
More recently, even the highest judicial officer in the land, Chief Justice Tun Zaki Azmi, was appointed to his position in a considerably controversial manner.
Tun Zaki was not promoted from any level of the bench, but from his position as a lawyer and, as ‘coincidence’ would have it, a legal advisor to Umno. I’m not sure, but would that technically make even a sessions court judge ‘outrank’ him prior to his catapult into power?
Whatever Tun Zaki’s personal integrity, surely such a conflict of interest would be beyond inconceivable in any real, functioning democracy. If we cannot trust the promotion of key judges to the higher courts, how then, can we expect them to uphold justice pronounced by the lower courts – as in the Malek Husin and Perak cases?
These ongoing, mind-boggling trends cannot but put us in the mind of justice as being treated like a cheap whore — used and abused at will by those with money and power. I daresay there are plenty of actual prostitutes around with far more integrity than seems to pervade our justice system.
We can only hope that Malaysians from all backgrounds will do everything that is necessary to stop these perversions of justice, before the rot runs too deep.
15/08/10
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