KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak on Thursday petitioned the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to rule the dismissal of his August 2022 Federal Court appeal as unjust and flawed, as he “was sent to jail without the opportunity to defend himself”.
He will also argue at a Jan 19 review of his jailing over a 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB)-related corruption charge that he was not given a fair hearing.
His legal team said a failure to give a new set of lawyers more time to prepare – after being appointed three weeks before the appeal in the Federal Court – unjustly punished Najib.
“At all material times, Najib thought this process of change of lawyers and being provided more time was a regular occurrence and should not be an issue (because in normal cases, it is exactly that),” said the defence team in a written summary of its planned submissions.
“Instead, the Federal Court did not allow the new lawyers any time and said they should not have taken up the brief if they were not prepared and insisted the appeal go on.
“In other words, the Federal Court punished Najib due to the ‘fault’ of his lawyers (as alleged by the court) which is patently unfair. This is like punishing person A for a mistake done by person B.”
While any ruling by the WGAD would not be directly binding, it would be “very influential”, according to Najib’s lawyer Shafee Abdullah, especially since Malaysia had a jurist who is currently a member of the working group.
Although the apex court had set Jan 4 as the deadline for submissions, defence counsel Farhan Shafee told The Straits Times on Wednesday that they requested an extension “to facilitate some additional material” ahead of the judicial review. The team will make the submissions on Monday.
Najib had appointed senior lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik in July 2022 to lead his appeal against a 2020 High Court conviction for one charge of abuse of power, as well as three counts each of criminal breach of trust and money laundering involving RM42 million (S$12.8 million) from former 1MDB subsidiary SRC International.
Najib has been serving a 12-year jail sentence since the five-man Federal Court bench led by Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat dismissed his appeal on Aug 23.
“It is Najib’s right to change his counsel, and he has never done so before. Although the public has speculated this was a delay tactic, neither the court nor prosecution ever said this was the case,” said the defence team, now again led by Tan Sri Shafee, who had represented Najib in the earlier stages of the SRC case.
The week-long appeal last August saw unprecedented scenes as a revolving door of defence lawyers representing Najib refused to make any written or oral submissions in defence of their client, claiming they were left unprepared by the decision not to postpone the hearing.
Mr Farhan also said on Wednesday that other facets of the review will include the dismissal of two other applications during the apex court proceedings.
One was a bid by Najib’s lawyers to nullify Najib’s hearing in the High Court on the basis of trial judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali not recusing himself over an alleged conflict of interest.
The other was to recuse Justice Maimum from the Federal Court appeal due to Facebook posts made by her husband in May 2018 that allegedly demonstrated negative views of Najib’s leadership and had concluded the then prime minister had siphoned funds from 1MDB into his personal bank account.
Despite being convicted in 2020, the former Umno president had been allowed to post bail and live freely – and remain politically influential – until the Federal Court decision four months ago.
Najib is also seeking a royal pardon.
