Najib Razak's Ex-Guard Implicates Him in Murder Case in Bid for Retrial

(Bloomberg) -- A former police guard of Malaysia’s ex-premier Najib Razak has filed to seek a retrial after he and another man were sentenced to death for the 2006 murder of a Mongolian woman.

Azilah Hadri applied to set aside the conviction that placed him on death row, with the court setting April 20 as the hearing date, his lawyer Kuldeep Kumar said in Putrajaya. Najib’s lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah said he will apply to act as an intervener as the court considers the application, since Azilah’s sworn statement contained accusations that the former premier was implicated in the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu.

“I feel that my client is being targeted in a way, almost politically, to get him victimized so that he could be arrested and put in prison without bail,” Shafee said in Putrajaya on Tuesday.

Najib is out on bail as he goes through trials for dozens of corruption charges linked to troubled state fund 1MDB. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the 1MDB case and denied any involvement in the murder case.

Death Penalty

Azilah said in a statutory declaration published by Malaysiakini news website that Najib ordered him to covertly arrest and destroy Altantuya because she was a foreign spy and a threat to national security. The former guard also said Najib told him to “shoot to kill” when Azilah asked for clarification, and that the former premier told him to then dispose the body using explosives kept by the police’s Special Actions Unit.

Najib has “totally denied everything that has been alleged,” Shafee said to reporters on Tuesday.

Azilah and Sirul Azhar Umar, who were part of a rotating pool of policemen who guarded Najib, were convicted of the murder in 2015. Sirul remains in Australia, which has said it won’t extradite him because Malaysia upholds the death penalty.

Najib’s former adviser Abdul Razak Baginda, who admitted an affair with Altantuya, was acquitted in 2008 of abetting the killing due to lack of evidence.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hadi Azmi in Kuala Lumpur at klnews@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Yudith Ho at yho35@bloomberg.net, Ruth Pollard

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.