A drag at Mongolian's murder trial

Maria J. Dass
Sun2surf

SHAH ALAM (Jan 2, 2008): The Altantuya Shaariibuu murder trial, which has wound down over the last two months, was further reduced to a snail's pace today as a total of 117 queries were raised on the discrepancies in the information between Celcom (M) Sdn Bhd's raw data and the data on the phone bill of the 019 number used by Chief Insp Azilah Hadri.

Also scrutinised was the data obtained from CyberSecurity Malaysia.

Among the discrepancies brought up were pertaining the differing call and SMS durations in the documents tendered in court, and the absence of some data in the phone bill although it showed up in the raw data and vice versa.

Celcom (M) Sdn Bhd Investigations and Special Project executive Mohd Firdaous Mohd Omar, 30, spent most of the morning going through the data to answer each of the question posed to him by Azilah Hadri’s counsel Kuldeep Kumar.

By 12.30pm, Kuldeep was not even halfway through his list of 117 questions.

Judge Mohd Zaki Md Yasin then suggested a long break to give the witness time to scrutinise the data over lunchtime to speed up the process.

"These questions are repetitive and we need to move faster, so I suggest that the witness go through all the data in question and return at 2.30pm to respond to it," said Mohd Zaki.

Police Special Action Unit's Chief Insp Azilah Hadri, 30, and Cpl Sirul Azhar Umar, 35, were charged with the murder of Mongolian, Altantuya Shaariibuu, 28, at Bukit Raja, Selangor, between 10pm, on Oct 19 and 1am, Oct 20, 2006.

Political analyst, Abdul Razak Abdullah Baginda, 46, is charged with abetting the two police personnel at Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, between 9.54am, Oct 18 and 9.45pm, Oct 19, 2006. The penalty for both offences is the death sentence.

The proceedings are before Shah Alam High Court judge Datuk Mohd Zaki Md Yasin. The prosecution team is led by Tun Abdul Majid Tun Hamzah and assisted by Noorin Badaruddin, Hanim Rashid and a few others.

Datuk Hazman Ahamd and J.Kuldeep Kumar represent Azilah, Kamarul Hisham Kamaruddin, Hasnal Rezua Merican and Ahmad Zaidi Zainal appear for Sirul Azhar while Abdul Razak is represented by Wong Kian Kheong.

Karpal Singh and his assistants hold a watching brief for Altantuya's family and the Mongolian government.