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The imprisoned former leader asserted that a royal order from the Malaysian king had approved his relocation to house detention.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s attempt to serve the remainder of his prison term under home arrest was denied by a Malaysian court.
The ruling on Wednesday was made in response to a judicial review petition that Najib filed on April 1. In that appeal, he claimed to have direct knowledge of an “addendum order” that the then-King Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah had issued, enabling him to serve out the remainder of his sentence for corruption in house arrest. Najib said the amendment was made during a board meeting on pardons on January 29, which was presided over by Sultan Abdullah. The meeting also resulted in a 50% reduction in the fine and a 12-year jail sentence for graft related to the multibillion-dollar 1MDB affair.
The former prime minister said he would be entitled to serve the balance of his time under house arrest and to carry out the order’s execution if it existed, thus he had asked the court to force the administration to respond to or validate the existence of the royal order.
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Najib’s motion did not establish an arguable case that required a full hearing, the Kuala Lumpur High Court said, according to a copy of the order made available to the media on Wednesday.
Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and a senior politician from Najib’s party claimed to have seen a copy of the royal edict in their affidavits, but Judge Amarjeet Singh ruled that the government was not legally obligated to respond to the case and dismissed their claims as hearsay.
Najib’s attorney, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, informed reporters that Najib intended to appeal the ruling.
“The court said there is no legal duty but in terms of ethics, the government should have answered,” Shafee said.
King Al-Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah, whose five-year tenure as head of state came to an end in January, presided over the pardons board that cut Najib’s tenure in half. Sultan Abdullah is from Pahang, which is Najib’s hometown.
Najib claims in his application that the attorney general, home minister, pardons board, and four other people are hiding the sultan’s directive.
“in bad faith”.
Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said he had no knowledge of such an order as he was not a member of the pardons board. The others named in Najib’s application have not made any public comments.
Shafee said Najib’s application was not based on hearsay but that there was “digital evidence” of the addendum, as Trade Minister Zafrul Aziz had taken a snapshot of it on his mobile phone when told by Sultan Abdullah. He said the government’s silence also implied there was such an addendum order.
“One thing is clear: not one person or any government institution has said that this addendum doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, just say so. If the government dares say clearly there is no addendum, we can all go home and sleep,” he said.
