The Australian Immigration Department’s investigations found that former police commando Sirul Azhar Omar did not record or distribute any videos to the media while he was held at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre (VIDC) in Sydney.
This is based on checks on CCTV recordings, Sirul’s appearance in the videos and the backdrop used in the video, the department said in a statement. The statement was published by Australia’s 60 Minutes programme on its website today.
“These factors support the Department’s view that the video was made between the time of the Malaysian Federal Court decision and the time the individual entered immigration detention,” the department said, adding that it had obtained two independent translations of the video recordings.
It said it is not possible for someone to have smuggled in the clothing Sirul wore or the flannel backdrop seen in the videos. In a number of video recordings leaked to Malaysiakini, Sirul had among others said he was being used by certain quarters to slander others, but did not mention names.
Lawyer Americk Sidhu has earlier argued that Sirul recorded the videos after his detention as he had in one of the clips referred to a press conference by lawyer Kamarul Hisham and Hasnul Rezua Merican (photo), which happened on Dec 31, 2015. Sirul also refers to the application he is making for permanent residency in Australia, Americk said.
What is not possible is to predict the future. On the other hand, as the world knows, items get smuggled in and out of detention centres and prisons all the time.
Sirul was picked up in Australia and detained in Villawood in January of 2015. The eruption of the corruption crisis surrounding the Malaysian Prime Minister did not occur until Sarawak Report published details of the PetroSaudi deal later in March.
So, how did Sirul have the foresight to record a video, back in 2014, denouncing a ‘conspiracy’ to tarnish the name of the Prime Minister, when the whole theory of this so-called ‘conspiracy’ only emerged after that corruption crisis broke?
The Australian Immigration Minister is therefore going to have to decide if he is going to deal with this situation convincingly or become a complicit party in the laughable attempt to pretend that these recordings took place before Sirul was arrested in Australia.
The whole point of the video recordings was to use this former bodyguard to defend the Malaysian Prime Minister primarily against concerns that have been raised about who gave him the order to murder a woman who had threatened blackmail over a defence contract where he had taken bribes (according to prosecutors in a current French court case).
Before Sirul went into Villawood he himself was attempting to blackmail the Prime Minister for several million dollars over the same issue, as text messages have confirmed. Sirul wanted money to “say nothing.. that way I won’t bring down the PM”. The PM’s intermediary responded by saying they wanted to negotiate.
At this time Sirul had yet to hire his immigration team, which was fixed up for him by expensive UMNO lawyers after his arrest. Neither was anyone approaching him at that time to highlight the Altantuya case, which had drifted out of the news.
In fact, when Sirul was arrested he first reached out to people he hoped could help him finally tell the truth – that included the former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, who was visited by Sirul’s mother.
It was then that the operation swung into action, headed by the team of expensive UMNO lawyers, to control Sirul and use him to defend his former boss. The videos were a ham-fisted and obvious part of that strategy and have been so easily seen through and ridiculed in Malaysia that the orchestrators have bottled out of showing the final episode, said to ‘name the conspirators’ seeking to ‘use Sirul to defame Najib’.
They can’t show that ‘episode’ now, because it would one hundred per cent prove that the video was made in prison, because all the people the video was seeking to target (eg the editor of Sarawak Report) had no involvement with Sirul prior to his incarceration at Villawood.
Sirul complained at his conviction that he was being used as a scapegoat by powerful people. Nothing has changed in this situation and the Australian authorities should do a better job of protecting the innocent, not shield the guilty or face the public consequences.