French military deal linked to murdered model
Times Online (www.timesline.co.uk)
Razak Baginda and Hooded Azilah Hadri (?) and Sirul Azhar Umar(?)
A FRENCH arms company is at the centre of a deepening scandal involving the sale of three submarines, the murder of a beautiful Mongolian interpreter and the man most likely to become prime minister of Malaysia next month.
All three have been linked in a sensational sequence of revelations that has convinced many Malaysians that the woman was killed to silence her demands of a share in the rewards of the transaction.
The scandal exploded last week after the French newspaper Libération alleged that the submarines deal and the murder of Altantuya Shariibuu, 28, were connected.
A glamorous, cosmopolitan woman, Altantuya grew up in St Petersburg, spoke Russian, Chinese, Korean and English, moved in elite circles and has been dubbed “a Far Eastern Mata Hari”.
She became the mistress of a Malaysian political fixer and was allegedly trying to extort money from him at the time of her violent demise.
Two members of an elite Malaysian police unit that protects top politicians are on trial in Kuala Lumpur, accused of shooting her in the jungle and then blowing up her body with military explosives.
Azilah Hadri, 32, and Sirul Azhar Umar, 36, officers in the Special Branch, could go to the gallows if convicted of abducting and murdering Altantuya on October 19, 2006. A verdict is expected early next month.
Their trial is unfolding as Najib Razak, the country’s deputy prime minister, stands on the verge of taking over as premier after a ruling-party leadership election, due within days. Najib was accused by a young opposition MP, Gobind Singh Deo, in parliament, of involvement in the murder. Deo was suspended by the Speaker for making the remark. The deputy prime minister has strongly denied any involvement.
Testimony in an earlier court case has established an intimate personal and financial connection between the dead woman and a close aide to Najib who was minister of defence at the time of the submarine deal.
The aide, Abdul Razak Baginda, was acquitted by a court last November of being an accessory in the murder. He has since been working on a doctorate at Trinity College, Oxford. Baginda admitted that the dead woman was his mistress for about a year and prosecutors said she had pestered him for money after their break-up.
Just before her death she arrived in Kuala Lumpur, accompanied by a Mongolian shaman, who was to put a curse on Baginda if he did not pay up.Altantuya was dragged away from outside Baginda’s home by two Special Branch officers, but he was acquitted after maintaining that he never gave orders for her to be harmed.
The Libération exposé linking the murder to the shadowy world of arms contracts has embarrassed the French war-ship firm DCNS. Armaris, a firm now merged with DCNS, sold the three submarines to Malaysia in 2002 for £937m.
Attention has centred on why Armaris paid £107m to a Malaysian company called Perimekar in 2006.
Opposition leaders alleged in parliament that the payment was a “commission” for intermediaries and that Perimekar was secretly owned by Baginda. Najib replied that it was not a “commission” and that Perimekar was a “project services provider”.
Libération has alleged that Altantuya, who toured France with Baginda in a Ferrari, wining and dining at expensive restaurants, learnt of the payment. It said she was demanding $500,000 (£345,000).
DCNS has refused to comment. It is already the subject of a French judicial investigation into corrupt practices, thanks to a whistleblower who has detailed bribery and industrial espionage allegations.
Last week, efforts to contact Baginda, a self-styled political analyst, at his new home in Oxford were unsuccessful. Najib has avoided public comment but his politically influential wife, Rosmah Mansor, told the French news agency AFP that she was “shocked” by attempts to link her husband and her to the case.
Additional reporting: Alex Yong in Kuala Lumpur
I believe Azhar and Azilah will be found guilty, a sentence calculated to boost Najib’s image, and then given new make-overs and armed with new passports and a bank account and would be ferried off to secure locations abroad.
________
New York Bean, the public has never seen their faces. Azhar and Azilah have become Malay women in tudong. So you may be correct to speculate that they would be given new identities and ferried off to some secure location abroad with loads of money in the bank. A couple of drug addicts will go to the gallows on their behalf. But who is behind this bizzare murder will be known in a matter of time. As a muslim, I believe, God is Great.—Din Merican
Bean - March 22, 2009 at 9:32 pm
“The aide, Abdul Razak Baginda, was acquitted by a court last November of being an accessory in the murder. He has since been working on a doctorate at Trinity College, Oxford …”
PKR-PR cannot one day bring him back and charge him with the same crime. So this guy is free to walk and what better place to call home than Oxford, England. He may bump into the real Mr. Bean (the actor who played Mr. Bean is a graduate from University of Newcastle in electrical engineering before he studied for his MSc at Oxford). Lorraine Esme Osman chose Cambridge instead of Oxford and that’s because Cambridge has more pubs where he could have a drink and a smoke and reflect and enjoy his life style as fugitive from justice – until justice caught up with him.
Those thrown into the political wilderness ended up with lecturing posts abroad, writing books etc. Razak Baginda (though not a politician himself) is not the first nor the last. There was Musa Hitam and then Rais Yatim and then there is, of course, Anwar Ibrahim.
Mahathir was cast out of UMNO in the mid 60s headfirst by Tunku and ended up writing his now infamous Malay Dilemma which he contradicted later in his career and ended up blaming the Malays for his own failure.
Azizul and Azhar can write books on how to use military explosives in getting rid of evidence. Don’t count on them being best sellers anywhere except the Police College in Kuala Kubu Baru.
Bean - March 23, 2009 at 12:34 am
Anything is possible when the same actor plays the same wicked roles of judge, jury and executioner whereby Life imitates Art when facts became muddled and even stranger than fiction !
The main protagonist behind this purported crime, puts to shame, Lord Edmund, the main evil character in “The Black Adder” – an eighties British T.V. satire played by Rowan Atkinson, the same actor who played Mr.Bean.
By the way, are the two defendants allowed to cover up their faces in court as well ? Is there a law that states that the identities of accused cannot be revealed ?
.
OCHO-ONDA - March 23, 2009 at 1:33 am
Hope you have had the chance to read Najib’s interview in The Sunday Times (March 22, 2009)[nstonline---www.nst.com.my]. Sheer hypocrisy, to me.
Here, for example, is his comment on his dream team in response to this question: What are the qualities you are looking for in the people who will be in your team? His answer, and I quote, is:
“First, they must be committed to the struggles of UMNO rather their own self-interests or serving certain groups. Secondly, they must be open and ready for reforms and changes. Thirdly, they must be good leaders in the eyes of the people. In other words, they must be credible and qualified”.
Does he himself fit the bill? Read the Times article again, and tell me to my face whether I am incorrect to say that just on the basis of his own criteria he is unqualified to be our next Prime Minister. Character matters and Najib is full of scandals. He is certainly not Mr. Clean. And I say to Rosmah, it is not Najib’s destiny to be Prime Minister. It is more like a freak accident.—Din Merican
dinobeano - March 23, 2009 at 8:15 am
Din, this is not a freak accident. He is a product of a corrupt system since 1981. Therefore he is more like a curse to Malaysia than a freak.
A corrupt system will only produces corrupt leaders and individuals who use power for self interest. As far as I am concerned , Malaysia will progressively degenerate into anarchic state, devoid of the rule of law if we continue at the present rate of socio-economic and political development.
In order to secure his position Najib could engineer and create situation of continued political instability using the present economic crisis as a pretext to declare a state of emergency just like his late father did after May 13 1969. I have read Najib interview in NSTP on Sunday 22 March 2009, and would like to quote him in order to support my contention, as follows :”I heard that ‘Tun Razak’ is back in fashion and that his time has become fashionable”. Which part of his late father’s politics is he talking about? I think, it is going to be “democracy without concensus” (Karl Van Vorys) again. Let us wait and see.
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Joannah - April 10, 2009 at 3:45 pm
A life after death for Altantunya. Hope the French Court will unearth all the dirt from the rubbish and all those found guilty whether they are Malaysian or the French ought to face Justice on this Earth. Make use of the Interpol .
Malaysian Malaysia - April 17, 2010 at 6:07 pm