The Kuala Lumpur High Court today deferred Hulu Kelang state assembly representative Mohd Azmin Ali's appeal against a perjury conviction, after being informed that some documents are missing from the appeals records.

Justice Ahmad Maarop set Aug 14 for the appeal and said the court would get hold of the relevant documents so that the proceedings could start.

Azmin expressed surprise, asking how the documents could have vanished.

"I talked to my lawyers and they told me that this had never happened before. I don't know how this happened," he told malaysiakini when contacted today.

The records of appeal are prepared by the court and given to counsel as guidance for the appeal. These contain detailed notes of proceedings and all documents and exhibits tendered during the trial.

Incomplete records

When the appeal was mentioned this morning, Azmin's lawyer C V Prabhakaran alerted the court to the fact that the records of appeal provided to the counsel was incomplete. One of the exhibits - Azmin's letter to the police - was nowhere to be found.

Deputy Public Prosecutor K Muniandy then said that, apart from the exhibits, several documents including the sessions court judge's grounds of judgment and written submissions submitted by counsel to the sessions court were also not in the records.

"We are concerned with this development because all the documents are very important to the appeal. Without these, how can we proceed?" Muniandy asked.

Azmin, the former private secretary of jailed ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, is appealing against sessions court judge Akhtar Tahir's decision of May 2, 2001, who found him guilty of giving false evidence.

Akhtar said he was satisfied that Azmin committed the offence while testifying as a defence witness in Anwar's corruption trial at the High Court in March 1999. He sentenced Azmin to 18 months' jail.

Azmin, who stands to lose his seat if he fails to set aside the jail term, was initially acquitted from the charge in July 1999 when sessions judge Hamdan Indah found that there was nothing in the prosecution's case that warranted him to enter his defence.

However, the prosecution appealed against the acquittal. On Feb 17, 2000, the appeal was allowed by High Court judge Abdul Wahab Patail, who ordered the case to be remitted back to the Sessions Court for Azmin to enter his defence.

This led to Azmin's conviction and sentence, against which he is now appealing.