Friday, October 10, 2008

RPK's TRIAL: Oral & Moral Support

(pic by P.Y. Wong)

Zorro Unmasked aka Bernard Khoo and I photographed yesterday at the Petaling Jaya Sessions Court where Raja Petra is being tried on a sedition charge for an article posted on Malaysia Today. The prosecution has already started tying itself up in knots with ill-prepared witnesses who seem to be there merely because they have been instructed to play their roles in this time-wasting charade.

Read the "offending" article again. I'll quote one section of it just to refresh your memory:

[Abdul Razak Baginda's] Affidavit also reveals that Altantuya was camped outside Razak’s house and this caused him to panic. He then went running to Najib, and Rosmah summoned Najib’s ADC, Musa Safri, and instructed him to solve Razak’s problem. Musa then summoned the two police officers currently on trial. So, it appears like Razak and the two police officers are not the only ones involved. Najib, Rosmah and Musa have also been implicated in this entire thing. And why the need for the police officer to declare that he had already killed six people before this if murder was not what was on everyone’s mind?

Then the Attorney-General did a very strange thing. Just before the trial started, he made a public announcement that only three people and no others are involved in the murder. This is not only strange but highly irregular as well. It is not the Attorney-General’s job to determine this. This is for the court to decide. Furthermore, the trial had not even started yet so how does the Attorney-General know what is going to surface in the trial? No one has testified yet and until all the testimonies are heard who knows who else is involved and whether the three accused who on trial are even guilty or not? The Attorney-General made it appear like he knows the outcome of the trial even before the trail commenced? How not to feel that the trial is a show-trial?


The only ones who ought to be offended, obviously, are Najib, Rosmah, and their security aide-de-camp DSP Musa Safri. Doesn't it make sense, if those named feel they have been wrongly accused, for them to file a statutory declaration to negate Razak Baginda's affidavit? After all, RPK wasn't the one who mentioned their involvement - it was Abdul Razak Baginda.

So why did Gan Tack Guan, chief investigating officer in the Altantuya murder case, lodge a police report against RPK? On whose instruction did he do so? In his shoes, I would have immediately summoned DSP Musa Safri to be questioned on the sequence of events leading to chief inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar's being implicated in the murder of the Mongolian woman. Instead, Gan chose to accuse RPK of sedition.

What utter nonsense! Even a primary school kid can see the whole thing has been a colossal cover-up staged on behalf of Najib and Rosmah - who are ultimately answerable for the actions of their police bodyguards.

I salute all the men and women who have made it a point to turn up at the courthouse every morning as a show of support for RPK. You are all Malaysians I feel proud to call my friends. My timing yesterday was just a wee bit off and I didn't get a chance to enter the courtroom - so I didn't see RPK at all. But it was good to have a brief chat with his feisty wife Marina and RPK's youngest daughter, the vivacious Princess Sara.

Let's pray that the judge assigned to RPK's case is fair-minded and independent-spirited. And let's pray, too, that we will soon have a brand new, uncorrupt government that will immediately repeal the ISA and release all the detainees!