KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 18): Senior lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah has commented that should his team be successful in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s addendum application on Monday, the former prime minister should be allowed to serve his remaining jail sentence under house arrest immediately.
According to him, the Home Ministry cannot stall the implementation of the house arrest.
However, Shafee acknowledged that Najib’s release (to serve the rest of his prison sentence under house arrest) may take several days, due to the prison authorities' preparation for this eventuality.
“The prison authorities may need to make preparations to prepare the security for him to face the house arrest situation.
“The Home Ministry and (other respondents) can still appeal over the High Court decision (if we are successful),” he noted.
While a decision is expected on Monday over the status of the addendum by High Court judge Alice Loke Yee Ching, next week would also see Najib face another verdict with regard to the main 1Malaysia Development Bhd criminal trial (1MDB-Tanore) on Friday (Dec 26).
Najib had named the Home Ministry, the Prisons Department director general, the Attorney General, the Federal Territory Pardons Board, the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department for Law and Institutional Reform, and the Malaysian government as respondents.
While Shafee did not elaborate on his reasoning as to why a possible decision on Najib’s addendum cannot be stayed from implementation, in past habeas corpus (illegal detention under the Internal Security Act) cases, individuals detained can be ordered to be released immediately by the court where the court deems their detention to be unlawful.
House arrests have been done before
The senior lawyer had been answering questions asked by reporters on what could happen on Monday following the decision on Najib’s bid to serve the remainder of his jail sentence for his SRC International Sdn Bhd conviction under house arrest.
The addendum was purportedly issued by the 16th Yang di-Pertuan Agong on Jan 29, 2024, to then-attorney general Tan Sri Ahmad Terrirudin Mohd Salleh, and it allegedly allows Najib to serve his remaining jail term under house arrest.
The addendum follows the Pardons Board allowing the former PM’s jail sentence to be halved from 12 years to six years and the fine to be reduced from RM210 million to RM50 million.
The High Court had initially thrown out Najib’s bid which had been filed on April 1 last year, only for it to be reinstated by the Court of Appeal upon appeal by the former PM for the matter to be heard on its merits.
As a result, the matter was heard on its merits before High Court judge Datuk Hayatul Akmal Abdul Aziz, and this was later transferred to Loke’s court following Hayatul Akmal’s elevation to the Court of Appeal.
Shafee maintains that allowing a prisoner to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest is nothing new — as claimed by Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail — as this had been done before in the case of Kenneth Lee Fook Mun, who was the grandson of Tun HS Lee, where Fook Mun was allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest following a murder conviction.
The defence lawyer explained that despite the murder conviction, Lee was allowed a pardon, for him to serve the sentence under house arrest, so that he could care for his ailing father, and this was done according to the existing legislation and the Prisons Department’s rules.
Prior to this, Loke had dismissed Shafee’s bid to cite Ahmad Terrirudin for contempt of court for not disclosing the addendum.
As a result, the judge heard submissions on the merits of Najib’s application, with opposition from the Attorney General’s Chambers.
Loke has since brought forward the decision from January to Monday (Dec 22).