Altantuya Murder Case 26/07/07

Prosecution Fails To Admit Sirul Azhar's Disclosure Of Crime Scene

SHAH ALAM, July 26 (Bernama) -- The prosecution suffered another blow when it failed to get the High Court to admit Sirul Azhar Umar's information to the police disclosing the location where Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu was murdered.
Justice Datuk Mohd Zaki Md Yasin ordered that the information produced by the prosecution through its 22nd witness, Chief Insp Kamaroszaman Othman, be expunged from the record.
In his oral ruling, Mohd Zaki held that the information given by Sirul Azhar, the second accused, during the 20-minute interrogation by Kamaroszaman on Nov 6 last year was not within the ambit of Section 8 of the Evidence Act 1950.
The prosecution had sought to admit the information as evidence under Section 8 to show that there was a disclosure by Sirul Azhar which led the police to the crime scene.
Mohd Zaki ruled that the information given by Sirul Azhar was a statement and Section 8 did not include statement.
Sirul Azhar, 36, together with Chief Insp Azilah Hadri, both of the Bukit Aman Special Action Force, are charged with murdering Altantuya, 28, at a location between lots 12843 and 16735, Mukim Bukit Raja, between 10pm on Oct 19 and 1am on Oct 20 last year.
Political analyst Abdul Razak Abdullah Baginda, 47, is charged with abetting them in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur between 9.54am on Oct 18 and 9.45pm on Oct 19 last year.
The judge also ruled that the information given by Sirul Azhar did not fall under the ambit of Section 27 of the Evidence Act.
Under Section 27, it must be proven whether or not information leading to the discovery of crime scene given by a accused person under police custody is a confession of guilt.
Earlier, when Kamaroszaman, 44, from the interrogation branch of the Bukit Aman CID revealed the information which he had obtained from Sirul Azhar during interrogation, Sirul Azhar's counsel, Kamarul Hisham Kamaruddin, objected to its admissibility under Section 27 of the Evidence Act.
Deputy public prosecutor Tun Abdul Majid Tun Hamzah, however, said that the prosecution was not adducing the information under Section 27 but under Section 8.
Kamarul Hisham then applied for Kamaroszaman's evidence relating to the information to be expunged from the record as it was not evidence under Section 27. He also said that the evidence was not within the ambit of Section 8 as Sirul Azhar's conduct during the journey to the alleged crime scene was not known to Kamaroszaman.
The court on July 10 also threw out Sirul Azhar's alleged confession to the crime.