ON October 19, 2006, a 28-year-old woman was bundled into a car at a house in Kuala Lumpur, driven to a remote jungle clearing and shot in the head with a semiautomatic.
Military-grade explosives were then strapped to her body and detonated, blowing the young model and interpreter into smithereens.
Altantuya Shaariibuu’s murder has remained shrouded in mystery ever since, with evidence suggesting she was caught up in an international web of corruption through her work as a translator and an affair with a senior Malaysian government official.
Two special forces police officers were convicted and sentenced to death for killing the Mongolian mother, but they had no visible motive or connection to her. There is speculation others were involved and are being protected at the highest level of government.
With one of these officers, Sirul Azhar Uman, being held Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre since January, Australian filmmaker Mary Ann Jolley set out to find answers. Her investigation saw her deported from Malaysia, escorted to her boarding gate by five uniformed officers who would not say why. It looks like the government doesn’t want anyone snooping around — but there are others who are not going to let this go.
The 28-year-old mother knew someone wanted her dead.Source:Facebook
THE VICTIM
When Altantuya went to Malaysia for the last time, leaving her two sons in Mongolia with her parents, she told her father: “I’ve met this big boss there.”
That was Razak Baginda, a defence analyst and close confidant of then-deputy and now prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak. Altantuya was having an affair with Baginda, and the couple travelled all over the world together.
Baginda later admitted he had given her tens of thousands of dollars, and she was blackmailing him for more. “If you prefer money than life it’s OK,” she wrote in a letter. “Razak don’t play. You call me or I’ll come to your home today.”
Eventually, Baginda went to the deputy PM’s personal security chief, who introduced him to Azilah Hadri, the senior officer eventually convicted of Altantuya’s killing. Hadri boasted he’d killed people and could fix the problem, Baginda told police. The government official insisted he had warned Hadri not to do it.
The day before Altantuya’s murder, she went to the police saying she feared for her life. “I’m just a normal girl trying to meet my lover who lied to me, who promised me many things but now wants to put me in jail or kill,” she told officers. “Maybe it’s my fault to blackmail him but I have my own problems because of his lies. If something happened to me, please check with this person.”
THE LOVER
Altantuya was taken from Baginda’s home on the night of her murder. A week later, the defence analyst was detained along with the two officers later convicted of the crime, and charged with abetting the murder.
It is alleged that Altantuya was far more than just his mistress, and had assisted in a controversial submarine deal thought to have been used for kickbacks. Some claim she was pregnant with his child.
Baginda brokered Malaysia’s billion-dollar purchase of two Scorpene submarines from France in 2002, and the $US125 million contract for coordinating the building of the subs went to companies reportedly set up by Baginda in his wife’s name.
He claimed he didn’t meet Altantuya until 2004, but receipts uncovered by a French investigation show she travelled with him to Paris, Hong Kong and Macau.
Cynthia Gabriel, director of an anti-corruption organisation in Malaysia, insists his girlfriend would have at least known about the deal. Gabriel has since received death threats.
A few years after the trial began, Baginda was acquitted of all wrongdoing and, unusually for a Malaysian case, there was no appeal. Six months later, Razak was sworn in.
THE PRIME MINISTER
The alleged corruption goes all the way to the top. A private investigator hired by Baginda to protect his family made the explosive claim that prime minister Razak also had an affair with Altantuya.
The PI said Baginda introduced the pair at a diamond exhibition in Singapore, that they dined in Paris and Altantuya was offered $US500,000 commission for helping broker the submarine deal.
Razak says he never met her.
The day after he made his statement, the private investigator retracted it as “inaccurate”, said he had been compelled to sign it, and disappeared. The lawyer who helped him write the statement was bemused.
Two and a half years later, the witeness called his lawyer from Kashmir apologising for causing trouble and saying he stuck by the statement. He said his family had been threatened and he had been offered $US1.3 million to retract the statement and leave the country — by people working on behalf of the PM.
THE FATHER
Altantuya’s father Setev is determined to find justice for his daughter and her sons. With the criminal finally over, he is starting civil proceedings against the Malaysian government, the convicted officers and Baginda. All he wants is to find out the truth.
“She was a free-spirited, open-hearted person,” he told filmmaker Jolley when they met in Hong Kong. “Maybe she made someone furious or mad, but she wasn’t terrorist, she didn’t kill anybody, she didn’t illegally cross borders. There must be a huge amount of money, power and possibly crucial operations behind this.”
Setev said seeing the scene of his daughter’s murder was like something from a film. “I’ve seen such terrible things only in the movies,” he said. “It looked like there had been a war. A bomb site, that’s what I saw.”
He is afraid of entering Malaysia, but will continue to fight for the truth, as the family grieves at home. “Her kids hunger for their mother’s love. Some day the people who did this crime will be punished.”
THE KILLER
With Razak desperate to forget the case and focus on prime ministerial duties, and Baginda directing an international peace foundation, perhaps the one person who can provide answers is living here in Australia.
Sirul was sentenced to death with Hadri in 2009, but in August 2013 their conviction was overturned. The prosecution appealed, and this January they were reconvicted, but with no travel restrictions, Sirul had fled to Australia. He was arrested and placed in high-security Villawood.
In the last few days of his trial, Sirul had wept and said he was being made a scapegoat to protect others. This February, he spoke from detention to say that he had been “under orders” and “the important people with motive are still free.”
The film crew were blocked from meeting Sirul in detention, but a relative he had been staying with had shocking revelations of his own.
Frank* said Sirul had told him Baginda had been at the scene of Altantuya’s murder, and had even pulled the trigger, while Sirul had blown up the body afterwards.
When Frank asked why Sirul hadn’t just walked away from the situation, he said he already knew too much. “I would have been dead.”
Sirul has now been visited three times in detention by a powerful businessman who is part of the prime minister’s entourage. Frank showed Jolley’s film crew a text Sirul had sent the man that suggest he too was blackmailing the government. “Greetings boss, I am in difficulties here. I want two million Australian dollars before you come to meet me. I need to guarantee the future of my child here. After that I want 15 million and I will not return to Malaysia, not ever, I won’t bring down the PM.”
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