While our former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has been imprisoned for more than 4 months now, yesterday (January 5), he filed a petition with the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) to seek his release from prison or a retrial of his SRC International Sdn Bhd case.
As announced by his lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, who said,
“We filed it at the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights addressed in Geneva and this was done today.”
“The title of that complaint will obviously be Datuk Seri Najib Razak vs Malaysia because we are taking the country to the UN because we are saying that the country has failed in not giving Datuk Seri Najib the fair trial that he deserves.”
Shafee said Najib wants the 5 legal experts of the UN working group to hear his petition and added that his client is seeking for a ruling that the Federal Court’s dismissal of his appeal in the SRC case was allegedly “unjust, flawed” and purportedly breaching his human rights and the Federal Constitution.
He said Najib is not asking the UN working group to decide whether he is guilty in the SRC case, but wants them to decide if his SRC trial was fair.
According to Shafee, the UN working group can call upon the Malaysian government to release Najib or grant him a retrial, if the UN group were to find that Najib’s trial had been unfair.
He believes that Najib’s petition meets the conditions required for the UN working group to hear the complaint.
Shafee said findings by the UNWGAD are “not directly binding” on Malaysia, but said it would be “very influential” and also suggested that there could be diplomatic consequences if Malaysia does not follow the UN body’s findings regarding human rights.
Asked why Najib was only filing the petition to the UN working group today about 4 to 5 months after his imprisonment, Shafee said it covered the same issues as the review bid at the Federal Court.
“But assuming on January 19, this matter goes on in the Federal Court and assuming we win, we will immediately write to the UN, the same UN working group to advise them this is what happened, therefore the remedy in short has been achieved, they may accommodate what is the latest that has happened in their opinion to the Malaysian government, so it is not inconsistent,” he said.
Shafee then suggested that Najib had actually exhausted all his legal avenues in Malaysia after failing in his appeals in the courts against his SRC conviction. (The High Court had on July 28, 2020 found Najib guilty in the SRC case, and Najib had lost his appeals twice in unanimous decisions at the Court of Appeal on December 8, 2021 and at the Federal Court on August 23, 2022.)
“As you know, review is not a process as of right, your right is appeal. We have exhausted appeals, so exhaustion of domestic remedies has been done. This is a mere review vis a vis our letter to the working group.”
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Also read: Yana Najib Wants Live Broadcast of Her Father’s Judicial Review for Transparency, M’sians Agree
