Deport the High Court: Murderer of pregnant woman let out of immigration detention as Andrew Giles goes MIA

Intriguing. Claims to have been ordered to do so by a higher up in the Malaysian government, but has never said who.

https://12ft.io/https://www.smh.com.au/national/sirul-azhar-umar-who-ordered-the-brutal-murder-of-atlantuyaa-shaariibuu-20150411-1mj5ce.html

“I’m not sure If I’m ready to tell all yet,” he tells me as we meet for the first time. “I was a member of the police force, we are bound by code of silence.”

What Sirul knows, though, has much broader implications than just for him. It has put the already unstable tenure of Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, on even shakier ground. It has brought one of Malaysia’s ruling elite, Australia’s old diplomatic foe, Mahathir Mohamad, out of retirement to speak against his former protege, and it has excited the country’s perpetually oppressed opposition with the hope that perhaps after nearly 60 years, the edifice of that country’s political dynasty is crumbling.

As Malaysia hangs on his words, Sirul is hoping somehow to trade his secret for a new life in Australia.

The story began at 4pm on October 19, 2006, when Sirul met his police partner Azilah Hadri in the bustling central market of downtown Kuala Lumpur. In the humid marketplace, Azilah told him the the pair had been ordered to eliminate a glamorous Mongolian translator who had penetrated the upper echelons of Malaysia’s political elite.

The translator was Altantuya Shaariibuu, the 28-year-old lover of one of Mr Najib’s closest advisors. Somebody important believed she knew about corrupt payments to government officials that had emerged out of an international submarine deal.

By 8:30pm on the night the order was issued, the pair had found Ms Shaariibuu and bundled her into a car. By 11pm she was on her knees in the depths of the dense tropical jungle that surrounds Kuala Lumpur, begging for the life of her unborn child.

One shot to the left side of her head should have done it, but her arm kept twitching. Sirul put another bullet through her skull before wrapping her head in a garbage bag to stop the blood soiling the forest floor.

The pair carried her lifeless body deeper into the undergrowth before attaching two sets of C4 explosives to her svelte frame and blowing it out of existence.

A decade later, the man I meet in Villawood seems almost gentle. His hair has greyed around the border of his face, but his face remains youthful.

“I was acting under orders,” he insists. “Those people who wanted to kill Ms Shariibuu are still free. I want the chance to redeem my family’s dignity … I am the scapegoat.” Sirul is dangling the possibility of revealing the secret of who issued the order, but says that, under the commando code, “you don’t tell”.

“At the moment I am grateful for the protection the Australian government has given me, my lawyers have said that I could be able to stay.”