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Late on Wednesday night KL time the Editor of Sarawak Report received a series of peculiar WhatsApp text messages on her personal phone.
They purported to be from Bukit Aman Police Station requiring her attendance at the Terengganu Magistrates Court in five days time, Monday 27th April, as the defendant in trial against her.  Had her lawyer informed her the police officer asked?
The answer was that the lawyer had themselves not been informed, therefore no.
Just last December the Malaysian High Court set aside a bizarre two year jail sentence issued out of the same Magistrate’s Court for what it judged was criminal defamation of the local Sultanah. This appears to be related to the same matter.
The ‘crime’ was to have in 2018 referred to the wife of the Sultan, as opposed to the sister of the Sultan, as having provided an introduction for the financial advisor Jho Low to the newly formed Terengganu Investment Authority.
Sarawak Report issued an apology and immediate correction, but was not able to fulfil a demand to pay RM300 million in compensation or purchase front page apologies in every publication in Malaysia.
The original criminal complaint had been set aside by prosecutors in 2018 but was revived behind the scenes (and without informing the defendant) in 2022/23, resulting in an unannounced trial in late December 2023 where the two year sentence was issued.
This process took place alongside aggressive civil litigation, whereby an initial High Court decision that Sarawak Report was innocent of defamation was appealed by the Sultanah’s lawyers and  overturned by the Appeal Court, citing some ground breaking theories in the realm of defamation law.
Sarawak Report financed the costs of that decision, thereby protecting local businesses who had been caught up in the suit under Malaysia’s draconian and outdated printing and publication laws.
It seems the Sultanah wants the editor of Sarawak Report behind bars in her local jailhouse as well, no matter the evident embarrassment this case represents to her relative who performed the introduction.
Sarawak Report had taken care in its publication at the time not to enter further into the business relationships between members of the Terengganu household and Jho Low nor to suggest any complicity in the financier’s later fraudulent dealings.
Indeed, the book praised the royal family for promptly stepping back when Jho Low’s ulterior motives and self-dealing became evident. Other publications have since cited the business ties in greater detail but were not pursued.
In its December ruling the High Court pointed to the fundamental abuses of due process under Malaysian law, resulting in what it judged to be a mistrial by the Terengganu Magistrate’s Court. This included the failure to press charges in person, the holding of a trial in absentia and indeed the total failure to notify Sarawak Report‘s editor and her lawyers that the trial was taking place.
The judge ruled that the prosecution should either be conducted again in the proper manner or the case should be dropped entirely.  Given the highly untoward manner in which a case that had been filed for No Action by prosecutors in 2018 was revived four years later, Sarawak Report was led to understand by the AGC that this should be the end of the affair.  Apparently this logic has been overruled.
The ‘notification’ by text was appears to be an attempt to nod in the direction of the correct due processes demanded by the judge.  Perhaps the prosecution will argue to the Magistrate that on this occasion the defendant has at least been given 5 days notice of the trial and presumably the opportunity to hop on an expensive flight to Kl at short notice (warfare permitting) in order to be arrested, charged and prosecuted, albeit without time for a defence to be devised.
Sarawak Report would be surprised to find a single KL lawyer who would acknowledge this to be a fulfilment of the legal and diplomatic processes required to try the author of a foreign publication in a local Malaysian magistrate’s court. The rules are there in the penal code and the High Court spelt them out in December.
Sarawak Report therefore texted back to the Bukit Aman police officer:
“My lawyer has not been informed of any of this. You ought to have gone through the proper channels but seem to be repeating the same behaviour as before in a manner that was set aside by the court owing to the violations of due process. Please could you approach me through the correct diplomatic and legal channels and stop sending me these strange last minute personal texts. I am on the other side of the world, I have engagements all next week (including a talk I will be delivering at the UK Foreign Office where I will most certainly raise this latest extraordinary development) and I have no plans to visit Malaysia where I have no business or any other ties. What you accuse me of is not a crime in either my country or very many others. My book was published in the UK and I have never set foot in Terengganu. My lawyer is [NAME], as you should know since he got the last Magistrate ruling thrown out for being conducted on these exact same lines.”
The (senior) police officer responded “Ok Madam. Understood. Thanks.”  
Sarawak Report‘s lawyer has yet to receive any information or validation that this proposed if highly untoward trial will be going ahead as indicated by the series of personal texts, which the editor can confirm comes from a genuine number.
It is notable that whilst the authorities in Malaysia continue to successfully retrieve billions of stolen dollars as a result of Sarawak Report‘s exposure of Jho Low and the former prime minister Najib Razak, the sole acknowledgement or reward received for that dangerous service from successive governments has been a series of INTERPOL Red Notices, prosecutions, fines and now this second attempt at issuing a jail sentence.
Mysteriously, on the other hand, Malaysia has dropped its Red Notice against the perpetrator of those actual grand crimes and thefts, Jho Low himself who now resides in China.
 
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