Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today it was up to the courts to decide on India's request for the extradition of an Italian businessman wanted over the Bofors arms scandal.

"What is important is the decision is not made by me. It is made by the courts," Mahathir told RTM when asked if Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had written to him about the case.

High Court Judge Augustine Paul will on Friday deliver his judgement after government lawyers supported by India pushed for a High Court review following a lower court's decision to deny the extradition of 64-year-old Ottavio Quattrocchi.

Quattrocchi's counsel Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told AFP today that he was optimistic that the court would throw out India's extradition request.

"We are confident of victory. We will win," he said.

Sessions Court Judge Akhtar Tahir had earlier ruled that he was unable to conduct an extradition inquiry without having the charges before him.

The court discharged the Italian businessman unconditionally and ordered his passport and bail be returned.

Politically motivated

India has been seeking Quattrocchi's extradition in relation to the 1986 scandal in which Swedish armament company Bofors allegedly paid US$14.2 million in bribes to clinch a weapons contract with India worth a total of US$1.3 billion.

A two-member team from India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had arrived in Malaysia to assist local lawyers representing the Indian government.

Quattrocchi, who had been on bail since his arrest in December 2000, had said the extradition attempt was politically motivated.

He had said he fell foul of an Indian political vendetta and his only crime was to have been a close friend of India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his widow Sonia.

Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, and Sonia now heads the opposition Congress party.

India's CBI has levelled charges against Quattrocchi as well as former Bofors agent Win Chadha, the British-based billionaire Hinduja brothers Srichand, Gopichand and Prakash and former chief of Bofors, Martin Ardbo.

Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had formally issued an extradition order against Quattrocchi but a court must rule on whether to enforce it because the two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

Quattrocchi lived in New Delhi until 1993 as the representative of Italian firm Snamprogretti Spa and then moved to Malaysia. AFP