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'Sirul a scapegoat for whom?'
Published:  Jun 25, 2014 9:33 AM
Updated: 2:34 PM

The Federal Court's hearing into the appeal against the acquittal of Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar for the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu enters the third and final day.

LIVE REPORT

12.43pm: Kamarul concludes. Azilah's lawyer Kuldeep takes over.

He cites case laws to convince the court that the station diary should be admissible as evidence.

Kuldeep also argues the call logs should not be admissible.

Tun Abdul Majid responds briefly and concludes.

Judge Arifin says the court will reserve judgment.

He adds decision will be delivered at a later date.

The court adjourns.

12.32pm: Kamarul also rebuts the prosecution claim there was blood on Sirul's jacket where Altantuya's jewellery was found.

He says what was found were merely trace DNA, with no evidence that the source was from blood.

“Blood on the jacket would suggest the deceased was somehow hurt. The only blood found is on the slippers,” he says.

12.25pm: Kamarul stands up to respond to Tun Abdul Majid's rebuttal on the house keys used to access Sirul's house.

He says it is correct that Sirul passed his keys to the police but had said they were not the same keys when showed the keys used to access his house by the police.

He adds that even ACP Mastor Mohd Ariff ( right ), who first received the keys from Sirul when he went to Pakistan to arrest the latter ,testified they were not the same set of keys.

When Judge Richard Malanjum asks if Kamarul meant to say that someone may have entered Sirul's house to plant evidence, he concurs.

Kamarul says there were credibility issues surrounding Altantuya's jewellery found in Sirul's house in his jacket because of the keys.

12.10pm: Tun Abdul Majid concedes that the mtDNA used to analyse the blood on the slippers cannot conclusively state that it matches Altantuya.

However, he says the conclusion was made based on circumstantial evidences including Altantuya's jewellery in Sirul's house.

Tun Abdul Majid concludes his rebuttal.

12.01pm: Tun Abdul Majid moves on to the defence's assertion that Sirul's police colleague Rosli did not see any bloodstain in Sirul's vehicle.

Sirul had passed his car keys to Rosli to start the engine from time to time while he was on duty in Pakistan after Altantuya's murder.

Tun Abdul Majid concedes this point but says the court should also look at his re-examination of Rosli.

"I established that when warming up the car (engine), he then left, he didn't look around. The location of the slipper was behind, not in front," he says.

11.50am: Tun Abdul Majid addresses Kuldeep's submission that the call logs showing Azilah's movements on the night of Altantuya's murder were inadmissible.

Kuldeep yesterday argued that the call logs were altered when being transferred from the actual raw data.

Tun Abdul Majid ( right ) says the call logs were not altered and only columns were added.

He adds regardless of the admissibility of the call logs, the actual raw data has also been submitted to the court.

Tun Abdul Majid also addresses Kamarul's submission that the keys used to access Sirul's house was not his own.

He says Sirul admitted that the keys given to police to access his house was in fact his.

11.30am: Court resumes. Kamarul has concluded his submission. Deputy solicitor-general II Tun Abdul Majid Tun Hamzah begins his rebuttal.

Tun Abdul Majid addresses Bukit Aman's station diary which is critical to Azilah’s alibi.

He cites case law saying the station diary can only be admissible if the person who made the entries is called to prove the content of the document.

This person was not called during the trial.

Azilah's lawyer, Kuldeep Kumar, yesterday argued that the station diary should have been admissible.

11.00am: Judge Arifin points out Sirul's move to give a statement from the dock meant that it carried little weight.

Kamarul cites past cases, stating that it should still be looked at if the statements corroborates with the statements of other witnesses' by the prosecution.

"It must be given some weight, certainly not zero weight," he says.

Kamarul recaps Sirul's statement from the dock that he was being made a scapegoat.

A riffin ( left ): Scapegoat for whom?

Kamarul: He said the real person in the crime is not in court, he is a scapegoat.

Ariffin: Everybody will say that.

Kamarul: The only question is if there is foundation to that (Sirul's statement).

Ariffin: He has to show evidence, he can't be a scapegoat for nothing... Like being involved in a quarrel or someone doesn't like you. You can't just throw to the court that you were framed.

Kamarul: There are two situations people say they are scapegoats, one is motive... The other can be when police locate a suspect and have evidence A, B, C they then create evidence D, E, F to strengthen the case.

Arifin: That is not a scapegoat, that is trying to strengthen the case.

Kamarul then explains that after police suspected Sirul based on some evidence, they could have fabricated more evidence to convince themselves and strengthen the case in court.

He said this is a well-known motive and is not related to jealousy, hatred or the like.

Court adjourns for a short break.

10.33am: Kamarul argues that the CCTV which captured Sirul exiting the toll booth towards Kota Damansara does not incriminate him as it is the way he normally uses to return to his home at Jalan Semarak.

Kamrul says Sirul's presence, together with Azilah, at Razak Banginda's residence and at Hotel Malaya, where Altantuya was staying, was in doing their duties as police personnel.

He says all these do not show any common intention to commit the murder.

10.08am: Kamarul says the blood stain on the slippers was tested using mtDNA (mitochondria DNA) as the sample was insufficient for a full DNA test.

He says mtDNA can only establish that the blood came from the same maternal lineage and unlike DNA, cannot specifically identify a person.

"They can go back 10,000 generations at some point in time.

"It doesn't even have to come from the deceased's cousin. It could even have been from a stranger who, at some point shared the same maternal lineage with the deceased," Kamarul says.

A

s such he says the mtDNA results cannot decisively establish the blood stain was from Altantuya.

9.44am: Kamarul says soil sample taken from Sirul's vehicle also did not match the soil at Altantuya's murder scene.

"There is no material connection. No one can establish the car was at the crime scene," he says.

9.36am: Kamarul tells the court that the slippers which were purportedly stained with Altantuya's blood and found in Sirul's vehicle were not there just days before.

He adds Sirul had passed his car keys to one Sergeant Rosli Ibrahim when he departed for duty as then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's security detail in Pakistan on Oct 31.

Rosli then handed the car keys to one DSP Mohd Khairi Khairuddin at the latter's request, he says.

"Rosli gave a direct statement that the slippers were not there when he took charge of the vehicle until he handed it over to Khairi.

"The slippers were clearly not there before," he says.

Kamarul ( right ) also complains that Khairi was not called by the prosecution to clarify this.

Judge Arifin Zakaria then asks if Khairi was offered as a witness by the prosecution to the defence, to which Kamarul replies in the positive.

However, he says the defence did not call Khairi as the burden was on the prosecution to do so as Rosli was also the prosecution's witness.

9.22am: The appeal hearing at the Federal Court against Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri's and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar's acquittal for the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu continues.

The duo were acquitted on Aug 13 last year after the Court of Appeal overturned their conviction by the Shah Alam High Court, citing several misdirections committed by the trial judge.

The two Special Actions Unit officers were accused of murdering Altantuya, who had been harassing political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda ( left ), a close associate of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

She was allegedly murdered between 10pm on Oct 19, 2006 and 1am Oct 20, 2006 at a jungle clearing at Puncak Alam, Selangor.

Abdul Razak was also charged for abetting the murder but was also acquitted by the Shah Alam High Court and the prosecution did not appeal.

The prosecution and Azilah's defence completed their submission yesterday while Sirul's defence was halfway through when court adjourned.

Sirul's lawyer Kamarul Hisham Kamaruddin will continue with the submission today. His other two lawyers are Hasnal Rezua Merican and Ahmad Zaidi Zainol.

Azilah is represented by lawyers Hazman Ahmad and J Kuldeep Kumar.

The prosecution is being led by deputy solicitor-general II Tun Abdul Majid Tun Hamzah.

The appeal is being heard before a five-member panel led by Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria.

The other judges are Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Richard Malanjum and Federal Court judges Abdull Hamid Embung, Suriyadi Halim Omar and Ahmad Maarop.

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