Malaysian court grants jailed former prime minister Najib access to house arrest decree | Court news
The three-judge panel rules 2-1 to grant Najib Razak’s appeal to use the decree to argue his case in the High Court.
Malaysia’s Court of Appeal has granted jailed former prime minister Najib Razak’s request to see a document he said should allow him to serve his sentence at home, in a rare victory for the disgraced former leader at the heart of the country’s biggest scandal.
The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on Monday to grant Najib’s appeal to use the decree to argue his case before the High Court.
“Given the fact that there are no challenges [of the existence of the decree]there is no justification that the order was not followed,” said Mohamad Firuz Jaffril, one of the three judges of the Court of Appeal.
71-year-old Najib, who is imprisoned for multi-billion dollars 1MDB scandalhe appealed a lower court ruling in July last year that rejected his request to confirm the existence and enforce a royal order he said entitles him to house arrest.
Malaysia’s Board of Pardons, chaired at the time by then-King Al-Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah, agreed in February last year to halve Najib’s six-year prison sentence from 12 and reduce the fines he was handed, sparking public uproar.
But Najib claimed it was a “supplementary order”. house arrest which was issued by the former king with a decision and was never implemented by the authorities.
After Monday’s court ruling, Malaysia’s interior minister said the Prisons Department had not received any notification of Najib’s possible house arrest last year.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has not received any communication on the matter from Malaysia’s former king, who chaired the pardons committee, Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told a news conference. “The government will fully implement the royal orders if they receive them,” he said.
Under the constitution, the monarch, who changes every five years under Malaysia’s unique system of monarchy, has the power to make decisions on granting pardons, on the advice of the pardons board.
After Monday’s verdict, “Najib was happy,” his lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told a news conference. “[He is] I’m very relieved that they finally recognized some element of the injustice attributed to him.”
In 2020, Najib was found guilty of criminal abuse of trust and authority for illegally receiving funds embezzled from a unit of state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
Najib remains on trial for corruption in several other 1MDB-related cases. He has consistently denied guilt.
Malaysian and American investigators estimate that $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB and more than $1 billion was funneled into accounts linked to Najib.
