KOTA KINABALU: The High Court here yesterday was told that a Bukit Aman Special Branch (SB) officer was instructed to produce another copy of documents of communication interception on the Lahad Datu intrusion suspects.
Supt. Norliah Salamat said she was instructed to type again the contents of all the documents of intercepted telephone conversations on 10 suspects carried out by the SB technical unit.
The assignment was delegated to her on April 26, 2013 by then officer-in-charge of the SB’s E2B unit, SAC Yusoff Mohd Amin, she said.
“I was instructed to retype the documents of communication interception because the documents were classified as ‘Top Secret’ and could not be revealed to any officer,” she said.
Norliah, the prosecution’s 98th witness, was testifying at the trial of 30 individuals linked to the intrusion that took place at Kampung Tanduo in Lahad Datu in February two years ago.
To a question by Deputy Public Prosecutor Mohd Dusuki Mokhtar, the SB officer said she was the only one entrusted to carry out the task of copying the contents of the communication interception documents.
“This was because of the level of secrecy of the information contained in the documents,” she explained.
She told the court that upon receiving the instruction and documents from Yusoff, she immediately brought the documents to her office to commence with the assignment.
“I studied each telephone conversation contained in the documents and then I retyped the contents of the documents as instructed,” she said.
Norliah said the task took about one week and she kept the copies she made along with the original documents in a locked steel cabinet in her office.
In the dock were 27 Filipinos and three local residents who are facing one to multiple charges of being members of a terrorist group and waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
They are also alleged to have recruited members for a terrorist group or wilfully harboured individuals they knew to be members of a terrorist group.
The offences were allegedly committed between Feb 12 and April 10, 2013.
The hearing, before Justice Stephen Chung at the Sabah Prisons Department, continues today. — Bernama