YOURSAY ‘But who betrayed your son? How much was he paid to murder...?’

Sirul 'betrayed', says mum

Not Smart: Piah Samat, your son Sirul Azhar Umar has been proven guilty. Whatever deals before and after the event do not matter now. It is clear even in Islam that when a life is taken, it must be paid with another life.

Yes, you should be ashamed of your son's act. However, you should be even more disgusted with the people who planned and assisted in carrying out the murder.

As a mother, your son matters most to you, but you have not expressed any sorrow or sympathy for his victim and her parents. Just imagine how their daughter would have been tortured, traumatised and suffered just before her death.

You should continue to seek the truth even after your son is hanged; not for the sake of your son, but for the sake of justice for someone's daughter, though you may want to decline saying that your son was a victim of the circumstances.

Vijay47: Dear Piah, as one parent to another, I can fully share and understand your grief and anxiety over the fact that your son now faces being hung by the neck until dead.

However, I can agree with only part of your statement - that Sirul was betrayed. There are absolutely no grounds to suggest that he was innocent just because "he was merely doing his duty as a police officer".

At pain of seeming brutal to you in these trying moments of yours, let me remind you that what he did was not his duty as a police officer.

Sirul carried out a savage act against an allegedly pregnant woman, and for him to have then blown her up after shooting her dead is something we cannot expect even of a vicious animal. Just imagine it was you, while you were expecting him.

One way or the other, he will meet his Maker soon and the only way he can attempt to make some tiny atonement for his immense sin is to reveal the whole truth, so that those even guiltier will also walk to the gallows. Perhaps God will then forgive him.

Odin: Madam Piah, probably the only way to save your son from the gallows is to instruct him to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth.

However, bear in mind that even if he did that, he would still be considered an accessory or a party to the murder and thus, be subject to a penalty. Your consolation would be that the punishment would be less severe than death. The choice is yours and your son's.

In a sense, you are right in saying that he was only doing his duty, which is equivalent to saying that he was only obeying orders, but it seems that the obeying of unlawful orders is not usually accepted in any court of law in civilised countries.

So, who betrayed your son? How much was he paid to murder Altantuya and completely destroy her remains? Who ordered him (and his partner Azilah Hadri) to commit the heinous crime? Why protect the party that has betrayed him by keeping silent?

Joe Lee: If PAS is serious about helping Sirul, the party can do a couple of things:

1. Hire a good Australian lawyer for him, since Australia has a policy of not sending a person back to a country where he or she faces the death penalty.

2. Get him to confess to the crime that he committed, and tell the lawyer who ordered him to do so.

Unlike Melayuland, Australia has what they call ‘rule of law’, not the ‘rule of gangsters’. The appointed lawyer may be able to get an Australian court to hear Sirul's side of the story.

The alternative is death for him, and extreme sadness for his mother. For the rest of us, however, we want the truth out.

Ratbatblue: Even in the military and the police, a subordinate can refuse to carry out an order from a superior if that order is deemed to be obviously unlawful.

And in peacetime, and the subordinate officer certainly has the right to refuse carrying out an order which involves murder.

If disciplinary action was to be taken for disobeying orders, the circumstances leading to this would be ascertained, and the truth would be revealed.

The only way for this policeman to get his sentence possibly commuted is to try a plea bargain type of action. He has to substantiate his claim of being ordered, and by whom, and then beg to be spared the noose.

Hang Tuah PJ: This saga should always be remembered by those who, in future, are called upon to ‘do their duty’. At the end of the day, you will be abandoned to pay for the execution of your so-called ‘duty’. Next time, don't be so gullible.

From today, we shall call this the 'Altantuya Saga' for all to remember, and be wary of blindly following orders.

Please follow God's path - and the God I am talking about is definitely not your immediate superior.

Fair&Just: The question is - if Sirul followed orders from his superior, who obeyed a superior from a higher position, and so on and so forth, who did the orders come from, actually?

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