PAS organ Harakah, which is being sued by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak for defamation, plans to call former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and former New Straits Times group editor A Kadir Jasin as its witnesses.

In its defence, Harakah wants to refer to the articles and postings by Mahathir and Kadir.

This was revealed today by Harakah 's lawyer Mohd Faiz Fadzil following case management of the matter before High Court judge Justice Hue Sièw Kheng in Kuala Lumpur today.

"We will apply to subpoena Mahathir and Kadir and other authors of articles from news portals which we have referred to in our defence,” Faiz said.

He said the court today allowed the admission of the articles “provided we call the authors”.

Initially, Najib's lawyers had objected to the articles being admitted.

Najib filed the suit against the online Harakah Daily editor Rosli Yaakcop, and the Harakah 's editor Taufek Yahya following the publication of an article based on a New York Times report on the lifestyle of Najib's stepson, Riza Aziz and 1MDB.

Najib is seeking general, aggravated and exemplary damages, interests and an injunction to prevent the defendants or their assistants from re-publishing the article.

Previously, it was reported on Feb 15 that the Court of Appeal had dismissed Najib's appeal for two paragraphs of Harakah's defence be strucked out.

The three-member appellate court bench felt that such matters should be ventilated in a full trial.

Justice Hue had previously also dismissed Najib's application to strike out the two paragraphs where Harakah claimed the defence of qualified privilege and fair comment.