Abdul Razak Baginda and Altantuya Shaaribuu

Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa was a Mongolian national, was a murder victim who was either murdered by C-4 explosives or was somehow killed first and her remains destroyed with C-4 in October 2006 in a deserted area in Shah Alam, Malaysia near Kuala Lumpur and Abdul Razak Baginda, a former political analyst from Malaysia, and close associate of the Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. He became a household name in Malaysia in 2006 when he was charged with abetting the murder of Altantuya Shaaribuu. He was held in prison but acquitted on October 31, 2008 when the Malaysian High Court judge found no prima facie case against him.

28 YEAR OLD MONGOLIAN BEUTY, ALTANTUYA SHAARIIBU WITH HER YOUNGER SON, ATANSHAGAI

The Murder

Altantuya was allegedly introduced to Abdul Razak Baginda, a defense analyst from the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre think-tank, at an international diamond convention in Hong Kong by Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, and had a relationship with him. She reportedly had worked as Abdul Razak’s translator on a deal he was brokering for the Malaysian government to buy submarines from France. The pair seems to have travelled to Paris together for the submarine deal.

Some sources allege that Altantuya came to Kuala Lumpur with a cousin in early October 2006 intending to confront Abdul Razak. When she went missing on Oct 19, her cousin lodged a police report and sought help from the Mongolian embassy in Bangkok. Altantuya, by her own admission in the last letter she wrote before her murder, had been blackmailing Razak.

The Malaysian police found fragments of bone, later verified as hers, in forested land near the Subang Dam in Puncak Alam, Shah Alam. Police investigation of her remains revealed that she was shot twice before C-4 explosives were used on her remains, although there has been later suggestion that the C-4 explosives may have killed her. When her remains were found their identity could only be confirmed with DNA testing. The provenance of the C-4 remains unclear.

ABDUL RAZAK BAGINDA, FORMER LOVER OF ALTANTUYA SHAARIIBU

Abdul Razak and three members of the police force were arrested during the murder investigation. The two murder suspects have been named as Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri, 30 and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar. They had been members of the elite Unit Tindakan Khas (the Malaysian Police Special Action Force or counter-terrorism unit) and were both assigned to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who was also the Defence Minister at the time of the murder. Abdul Razak has been charged with abetment in the murder.

The Evidences
-First Statutory Declaration

In a statutory declaration in his sedition trial in June 2008, Raja Petra accused Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor (the wife of Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak) of being one of three individuals who were present at the crime scene when Altantuya Shaariibuu was murdered on Oct 19, 2006. He wrote that Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, and Acting Colonel Aziz Buyong and his wife, Norhayati, Rosmah’s aide-de-camp, were present at the scene of the murder and that Aziz Buyong was the individual who placed C4 plastic explosive on Altantuya’s body and blew it up.

Dr Shaariibuu Setev, the father of murdered Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu, has asked the police to conduct a thorough investigation into an allegation by Malaysia Today editor Raja Petra Kamaruddin. He said the police should look seriously into the allegation by Raja Petra as it might provide them with fresh evidence. In retaliation, the two people named in Raja Petra Kamarudin’s statutory declaration on June 18, Lt-Col Aziz Buyong and his wife Lt-Col Norhayati Hassan, as having been present at the murder scene of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu are suing the Malaysia Today editor for defamation. Aziz is seeking an apology from Raja Petra to be published in certain websites and newspapers, the removal of the statutory declaration from his blog and damages of RM1 million.

-Second Statutory Declaration

A second statutory declaration was filed on July 1, 2008 by Abdul Razak Baginda's private investigator P. Balasubramaniam, disclosing Najib's links to the murdered Mongolian girl. He said the police omitted information about the relationship between Najib and Mongolian murder victim Altantuya Shaariibuu in his statement. In the declaration Abdul Razak had told Balasubramaniam that the deputy prime minister had a sexual relationship with Altantuya and that the trio had dined together in Paris. Balasubramaniam detailed conversations in a statutory declaration in which the well-connected political analyst allegedly told him he had in effect inherited Altantuya as a lover from Najib, who passed her on because he didn’t want to be harassed as deputy prime minister. Among other lurid details, Balasubramaniam described text messages between Najib and Abdul Razak in which the latter was asking for help to avoid arrest. Former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to look into the case.

P. Balasubramaniam made a retraction of the statutory declaration he made on July 1 and its replacement with one that erased all traces of allegations with references to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and Altantuya Shaariibuu's murder. There were accusations that this new statutory declaration could have been due to intimidation or inducement, and was done on his free will. Bala's first lawyer Americk Singh Sidhu said he was not able to get in touch with Bala despite repeated phone calls. The Malaysian police said on 6 July that they have asked Interpol to help find the private investigator that has been reported missing since making explosive claims linking the deputy premier to a murder. Bala's nephew has filed a missing person's report, saying the investigator and his family had disappeared. It was discovered on July 10 that Balasubramaniam's house in Taman Pelangi here has been broken into but police have yet to ascertain whether anything was stolen. Balasubramaniam is said to have taken refuge in a neighbouring country with his wife and children.

-Alleged Interference by Najib

Even behind bars under ISA detention, Raja Petra's website Malaysia Today carried a report detailing allegations on an exchange of text messages between Najib and Shafee Abdullah, the prominent lawyer who represented Abdul Razak Baginda before he was charged with abetting two police officers in the murder of the Altantunya. The SMSes, which went on from 8 November to 2 December, 2006 raises some questions over the handling of the murder case and suggests that Najib took a strong interest in the investigation from the beginning.