by Amanda Hodge
The Australian
FEBRUARY 20, 2016
Ten years ago the murder of a glamorous Mongolian translator with links to Malaysia’s highest political office set off a chain of events that is now reverberating uncomfortably through Australia’s halls of power.
On October 19, 2006, Altantuya Shaaribuu, a translator and 28-year-old mother of two, was abducted by two Malaysian police commandos from outside the Kuala Lumpur home of her former lover, Razak Abdul Baginda, a close confidante of then defence minister Najib Razak and a key mediator in a multi-billion-dollar submarine defence deal.
Sirul Azhar Umar and Azilah Hadri, both bodyguards with an elite protection force for Malaysia’s top leaders, drove Shaaribuu to the Shah Alam forest on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, where she was shot twice in the head and her body blown apart with C4 explosives.
At his trial in Malaysia, Sirul — who is now being held in Sydney’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre after fleeing to Australia — insisted he had no personal motive for wanting Shaaribuu dead and was acting under orders. “I am a black sheep who has to be sacrificed to protect unnamed people,” he tearfully told the court.
Shaaribuu’s murder has become one of Malaysia’s most notorious crimes thanks to the political intrigue and murky networks of patronage and corruption it has always threatened to expose. Continue reading “Malaysia murder sets off explosion of intrigue”