KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 19 — A former senior police officer accused Putrajaya today of admitting last year to Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail’s role in allegedly falsifying evidence when it backed an independent panel’s findings on Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s “black-eye” case.
The former top cop insisted today that with Putrajaya’s endorsement, there was no longer a need to form a royal commission of inquiry or a tribunal to investigate Abdul Gani’s involvement.
He also claimed that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was aware of Abdul Gani’s involvement as the former had been briefed and was provided “complete evidence” in October 2008, when he was still the country’s deputy prime minister.
Mat Zain said he had briefed Najib at the latter’s Finance Ministry office in Putrajaya, adding that he had “assumed” the leader would take appropriate action once he took on the prime minister’s post.
“The excuse that there is lack of evidence should not be raised again. Saying further investigations are needed would also be irrelevant because the independent panel has already decided and the government has endorsed it,” he pointed out.
In July 2008, Anwar had filed a police report, accusing Abdul Gani, Mat Zain, former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan and a Dr Abdul Rahman Yusof of falsifying a medical report on his black-eye case, which alleged that his injuries had been self-inflicted.
Three independent panel members tasked to look into the evidence fabrication claims comprising Federal and Court of Appeal judges later cleared Abdul Gani and Musa of the allegations, but the status of Mat Zain and Dr Abdul Rahman remained uncertain.
Mat Zain, who had earlier claimed the formation of the panel itself as “unconstitutional” and that its findings should be deemed null and void, reiterated today that the panel had returned a 2-1 decision, with one member having found testimony linking Abdul Gani to wrongdoing.
“However, the government itself strongly opposed my challenge (on claims that the panel was unconstitutional), until a minister in the Prime Minister’s Department even made a lengthy ministerial statement in Parliament in December 2010.
“The government validated the formation of the three-member panel and as such, the decision of the panel was also considered valid,” said Mat Zain.
The statement, he said, ultimately meant that Putrajaya had validated Abdul Gani’s crimes as it had backed the findings by all three panel members, including the one who had found the Attorney-General guilty of wrongdoing.
Mat Zain also slammed Musa for denying recently in Berita Harian the accusations against him and Abdul Gani, pointing out to the former IGP that the matter was raised by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in his recently released memoirs “A Doctor in The House”.
“Among others, Dr Mahathir revealed that Musa Hassan had convinced him of Anwar’s homosexual activities. There must have been some very special information that Musa disclosed in order to convince Tun of this.
“Hopefully, he (Musa) will not claim that the expose in Tun’s memoirs was also a part of a conspiracy planned by Anwar,” he said.
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