LAWLESS GOVT: Imagine, AG appointed Shafee as govt prosecutor altho' he was under police investigation

Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail should be sacked for abusing his powers by ‘hiding’ an Order to Investigate (OTI) on lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah and continued to appoint the latter as a prosecutor in the Sodomy II appeal of Anwar Ibrahim, a former top cop says.

Former Kuala Lumpur CID chief Mat Zain Ibrahim filed a police report on Feb 7, three days before Anwar’s conviction, urging Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to exercise his authority over Gani.

Mat Zain said Najib should set up a tribunal to impeach Gani from the AG’s post, as former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad acted to remove ex-chief judge Salleh Abbas.

In his police report, Mat Zain asked why Gani continued to appoint Shafee to head the prosecuting team for Anwar’s Sodomy II appeal, despite the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) itself having signed the OTI dated Jan 3, 2014.

Mat Zain said that he only found out about the OTI on May 19, 2014, when the police called him to Putrajaya to have his statement recorded in relation to three police reports he made on Dec 15, 18 and 26, 2013.

It was then showed to him by the investigating police officer in Putrajaya.

Two of these three police reports by Mat Zain accused Shafee of lying in his affidavits in the Sodomy II appeal case (before the Court of Appeal), while the other said that there was a criminal conspiracy between Shafee and Gani.

Shafee made two sworn affidavits

Shafee was specially assigned as the lead prosecutor in the prosecution team of the AGC in the Sodomy II appeal case.

At the beginning of the Sodomy II appeal case in the Court of Appeal, Shafee made two sworn affidavits, on Dec 10, 2013 and Dec 18, 2013.

Shafee made these affidavits in reply to Anwar, who requested the court remove Shafee from the prosecution team for having conflict of interest.

Mat Zain said that both the affidavits by Shafee were checked, passed and filed in court by AGC itself.

“As Shafee had touched on many of the issues mentioned in my statutory declaration (SD) which I made on Oct, 7, 2013, I looked through Shafee’s affidavits.

“I found a few of the statements by Shafee in a few of the paragraphs that touched on important issues were not true. In fact, these were obviously false," Mat Zain said.

After Mat Zain had made his three police reports, there were no follow-ups from the police until May 19, 2014, when Mat Zain was shown the OTI for the first time.

What was in the OTI

Signed by Deputy Public Prosecutor Ishak Mohd Yusoff, the OTI stated that “it is conducting an investigation into an offence under Section 199 Penal Code, which was committed in the Appeal Court for the appeal of W-05-1901/2012 as reported in police report PRESINT 7/010437/13.”

The police report referred to in the OTI was the one made by Mat Zain on Dec 15, 2013, asking that Shafee be investigated.

Mat Zain said he believed that the AGC issued the OTI on Jan 3, 2014, because he had given a report titled “Obstructing the course of public justice” to the then Solicitor-General (SG) Idrus Harun and copied this to Najib on that very same date.

The dates are too much of a coincidence, Mat Zain said.

“That report was very detailed and included all the first three police reports and there was no way that the AGC could ignore that,” he added.

Mat Zain claimed that even the Putrajaya investigating police officer did not realise the date on the OTI was four-and-half-months prior to his police report.

He said that he was shocked that throughout the Sodomy II appeal case in the Court of Appeal, the AG had kept it under wraps that Shafee was officially "under investigation for misconduct".

Mat Zain then protested to the SG the very next day in an email, as Anwar had, by then been convicted by the Court of Appeal on March 7, 2014, about two-and half-months earlier.

Mat Zain said since Anwar had been convicted by the Court of Appeal on the Sodomy II charge, the OTI should then be amended to investigate Shafee under Section 200 of the Penal Code.

(Section 200 of the Penal Code states that whoever corruptly uses or attempts to use as true any such declaration knowing the same to be false in any material point, shall be punished in the same manner as if he gave false evidence. This means Shafee, if found guilty under the OTI, faces the same maximum term of 20 years in jail, as in the sodomy charge that Anwar has been convicted on.)

Mat Zain said the police have yet to contact him since that letter of protest on May 20, 2014.

At that point of time the of letter of protest was sent, Anwar's lawyers had already taken the appeal to the Federal Court.

Mat Zain's high-profile cases

During his heyday before his optional retirement, Mat Zain headed investigation teams on high-profile cases involving former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, former international trade minister Rafidah Aziz and a former Malacca chief minister.

Mat Zain’s statutory declaration on Oct 7, 2013, with details of events leading to the Sodomy II charge on Anwar, also states that he was intimate with those high-profile cases.

In his latest police report, Mat Zain pointed out that the very fact that Gani had signed the OTI showed that he already had doubts as to the honesty of Shafee.

The question remains why Gani continued to appoint Shafee, a lawyer in private practice, to head the prosecution team.

In the police report calling for a tribunal on Gani, Mat Zain also stated that appointing Shafee was a misuse of public funds as entrusted to the attorney-general.

“The appointment of Shafee under Section 379 of the Penal Code makes him a public servant who is paid using the public funds, with the permission of the finance minister as well as the prime minister," Mat Zain says in his latest police report.

Anwar’s lawyers had tried to disqualify Shafee from heading the prosecuting team in the appeal case in the Court of Appeal three times.

Mat Zain’s SD was made after the first attempt failed and his SD was used as part of the exhibit in the second attempt to disqualify Shafee.

Anwar’s lawyers also failed in their second and third attempts to have Shafee disqualified.

On Feb 10, 2015, Anwar's appeal before the Federal Court also failed and he is now currently serving five years in the Sungai Buloh Prison on the Sodomy II charge, which he has maintained is political persecution. - M'kini