Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Malaysia media circus over Altantuya Shaariibuu murder case...

As many expected, a Kuala Lumpur-based “telephone press conference” didn’t come off with convicted murderer Sirul Azhar Umar, who is sitting in an Australian detention center and has hinted to the independent news portal Malaysiakini at the identities of higher-ups who allegedly said they would pay him to kill the Mongolian beauty Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006.

In what is rapidly becoming a media circus, officials of the fundamentalist opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia [PAS] made 15 calls, as a horde of reporters looked on, to Sirl’s phone in the Villawood high-detention facility but got only his voicemail. A second attempt later got through to the former elite police commando, who was convicted last December in Federal Court along with another police official, Azilah Hadri, of the murder of the 28-year-old expectant mother and translator but he refused to talk. Sirul fled to Australia last year after he and Azilah were temporarily freed by an appellate court on the murder charge. Azilah, however, stayed in Malaysia and is now in custody.

The story of the death of Altantuya has evolved into arguably one of the biggest scandals in Malaysian history, involving not only murder and adultery but massive bribery in the purchase of weapons by the Defense Ministry when Najib Tun Razak was deputy prime minister and defense minister. Seven years of trials in the high court, appellate court and Federal Court have all appeared designed to hide the motive and identity of whoever had hired the two to kill the woman.

Now it has evolved again, with PAS, which is bidding for primacy in the three-party opposition coalition with the vacuum left by the January jailing for sodomy of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, seeking to seize the reins in the case, first via the attempt to engineer the teleconference with a horde of reporters present. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Altantuya Shaariibuu comes back to haunt Malaysia...
  2. The tragedy of a brutal killing of Altantuya Shaariibuu compounded by courtroom farce...
  3. Malaysian court frees 2 cops in Altantuya Shaariibuu murder scandal...
  4. The murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu...
  5. Altantuya Shaaribuu murder in Malaysia: the truth at last?
  6. WikiLeaks and Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu's murder in Malaysia...
  7. Altantuya Shaariibuu, the Malaysian murder that just won't go away...
  8. Two Malaysian cops get death sentence for Altantuya Shaariibuu murder...
  9. Sordid sex-murder affair in Malaysia: who killed Altantuya Shaariibuu?

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