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C O N F I D E N T I A L KUALA LUMPUR 000073 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/01/2018 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM KJUS MY
SUBJECT: PROSECUTOR DOWNBEAT ON ALTANTUYA MURDER CASE 
 
REF: 07 KUALA LUMPUR 291 
 
Classified By: Political Section Chief Mark D. Clark 
for reasons 1.4 (b and d). 
 
¶1.  (C) Deputy Public Prosecutor Noorin Badaruddin, a member 
of the prosecution team in the Altantuya murder case 
(reftel), told Polchief during an informal conversation 
January 30 that there was almost no chance of winning guilty 
verdicts in the on-going trial of defendants Razak Baginda, a 
close advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, and 
two police officers.  She described the trial as interminably 
long.  Nearly seven months after the trial began (but with 
only 83 days of actual hearings), the prosecution now is 
presenting its 63rd witness out of an anticipated 80 and the 
defense has yet to make its case. (Note: The prosecution 
notified 132 potential witnesses that they might be called to 
testify.  End Note.)  Noorin anticipated the trial would 
continue for several more months and said that she actively 
sought excuses to escape from the courtroom monotony. 
 
¶2.  (C) By all accounts the trial has been a prosecutorial 
embarrassment from its inception, leading many to speculate 
that the ineptitude was by design.  On the eve of the trial 
Malaysia's Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail dropped his 
lead prosecutors and replaced them with less experienced 
attorneys.  Similarly, a lead counsel for one of the 
defendants abruptly resigned before the trial "because of 
(political) attempts to interfere with a defense he had 
proposed, in particular to protect an unnamed third party." 
Then in the first 30 days the prosecution fumbled through a 
series of key witnesses whom later had to be impeached for 
proffering testimony contradictory to their pre-trial 
statements.  In one case, a police officer testified that 
police interrogators "tortured and coaxed" her to make 
pre-trial statements which were untrue.  Subsequent witnesses 
testified that police reports and phone records had been 
changed and that other evidence had been tainted and should 
therefore be thrown out.  In another incident a witness 
testified that she had seen previous photos of the victim 
with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, and both the 
prosecution and the defense leapt to their feet to have the 
testimony stricken from the record.  The same witness also 
testified that hers and the victim's immigration records 
showing entry to Malaysia had been mysteriously deleted. 
Neither the prosecution nor the defense pursued a line of 
questioning regarding that testimony. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) The protracted nature case has led at least one 
regional newspaper to speculate that "the case is being 
deliberately delayed to drive it from public view." 
Malaysia's daily newspapers rarely mention the case's latest 
developments, and it is unprecedented in Malaysian judicial 
history that a murder trial could drag on for seven months 
and still not give the defense an opportunity to present its 
case.  Such an environment has led many to conclude that the 
case was too politically sensitive to yield a verdict before 
the anticipated general elections. 
KEITH