Altantuya Shaariibuu
PUTRAJAYA: The hearing date for the appeals of two police personnel convicted of the murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu has yet to be fixed because one of them, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri has not filed his petition of appeal.
Court of Appeal deputy registrar Kanageswari Nalliah fixed March 9 as the next case management date to enable Azilah’s lawyers to obtain a complete set of records of appeal and the High Court’s written judgment to enable him to file in the petition of appeal.
Azilah’s lawyer J Kuldeep Kumar said the petition of appeal could not be filed because he had only received 40 volumes out of 57 volumes of the documents.
This was because, he said, the court had sent the documents to Azilah in prison.
Kuldeep Kumar said the documents were subsequently sent to him in stages in the last six months, adding that he would obtain the remaining 17 volumes of documents from the court.
Meanwhile, lawyer Kitson Foong representing Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar said a hearing date would only be fixed by the court to hear the appeals once all the documents were in order before the court.
He said the petition of appeal for Sirul Azhar had been filed and he was considering filing further grounds of appeal.
Kitson and counsel Lim Kon Keen represented Sirul Azhar.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Devinderjit Kaur appeared for the prosecution.
Azilah, 34, and Sirul Azhar, 39, were sentenced to death by the Shah Alam High Court on April 9, 2009, which found them guilty of the murder of Altantuya at Mukim Bukit Raja between 9.45pm on Oct 18, 2006, and 9.45pm the next day.
Their trial went on for 159 days.
The duo, who were commandos with the police’s elite Special Action Squad, subsequently filed their appeals to the Court of Appeal.
Political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, 50, had been charged with abetting the duo in Altantuya’s murder.
He was freed by the High Court on Oct 31, 2008, without his defence being called.
Azilah and Sirul had testified in their defence, with the former giving evidence from the witness box and the latter testifying from the dock.
Judge Datuk Mohd Zaki Md Yasin found the defence presented by both men were only “denials and blaming each other”.
— Bernama