By Shannon Teoh
The Malaysian Insider
Jul 29, 2011
KUALA LUMPUR, July 29 — Datuk Mat Zain Ibrahim has called on Datuk Seri Najib Razak to sack Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail for repeatedly failing to initiate charges in high-profile cases such as the death of Teoh Beng Hock.
The former city criminal investigation chief said that the Attorney General would “try his best to trick his way to avoid prosecuting those who have clearly given false testimony” in the recent royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into how the former DAP aide fell to his death in a Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) office.
“For the sake of national interest and holding to the Rule of Law, we hope that the prime minister seriously considers using powers that only he possesses under Article 125 (3) and Article 145 (6) of the Federal Constitution to solve this long-standing crisis,” he wrote in an open letter to the Inspector-General of Police.
The two clauses in the constitution allows for the prime minister to appoint a tribunal to consider the dismissal of federal court judges and the Attorney General.
Mat Zain, who headed the 1998 police probe into former deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s black-eye case, has repeatedly accused Abdul Gani of deceiving the federal government.
He recently called for a royal commission of inquiry to investigate Abdul Gani’s role in destroying public confidence in the police.
In an earlier letter to IGP Tan Sri Ismail Omar, he had called on police to begin investigations into five MACC officers that the Teoh RCI found to have lied to the commission, three of whom he said should also be charged for abetment of suicide pursuant to the findings of the royal panel.
Mat Zain said that then deputy director for Selangor MACC Hishammuddin Hashim together with officers Arman Alies and Mohd Ashraf Mohd Yunus were culpable in the interrogation of Teoh as the RCI found that the three men had left the former DAP aide “almost a mental and physical wreck.”
In today’s letter, he cited the Commissions Act, which specifically allows for witnesses to be charged for bearing false testimony in the proceedings of an RCI.
Although the Act also states that no testimony in such a proceeding may be used as evidence for other charges, he said police should investigate the three anti-graft officers based on the RCI’s findings to establish if they should be charged for abetting in Teoh’s suicide.
The RCI unanimously ruled that Teoh, a former aide of Selangor executive councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah, committed suicide as a result of pressure from aggressive and continuous questioning by anti-graft officers.
The five-man panel wrapped up its report on June 15 after having heard testimony from 70 witnesses in its bid to unravel the mysterious circumstances behind Teoh’s death.
The 30-year-old DAP political aide was found dead on July 16, 2009 on the fifth-floor corridor of Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam after he was questioned overnight by MACC officers at their then-Selangor headquarters on the 14th floor.
The coroner’s inquest had in January returned an “open verdict” ruling out both suicide and homicide some 18 months after Teoh’s death.
The government was then forced to establish the RCI, which first met in February, with two terms of reference: to probe how Teoh plunged to his death and to look into MACC’s investigative methods.
But Teoh’s family has rejected the commission’s verdict and are currently mulling a judicial review of its findings.