THE reopening of the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder case will be expedited by the Attorney-General’s Chambers after new leads were presented today, said lawyer Ramkarpal Singh.

He said Attorney-General Tommy Thomas will look into the leads before reopening the probe.

“We have presented new and old leads to restart the investigation. I can’t tell exactly yet what those new leads are at this stage,” he said after a meeting at the Attorney-General’s Office.

“Very likely it will be reopened, and it won’t be delayed for much longer.”

Present at the meeting was the Mongolian translator’s father, Dr Setev Shaariibuu, who arrived in Malaysia last week.

Setev has called on the attorney-general to reopen the case.

Altantuya, 28, is believed to have been shot dead before her body was blown up in a forest in Puncak Alam, Shah Alam, in 2006.

It is believed that her body was blown up using military-grade C4 explosives.

Ramkarpal said he is optimistic that Altantuya’s murder will be investigated further, following his hour-long meeting with Thomas.

“As the new attorney-general, he said he will have to relook all the criminal and civil files.

“He knew what was going on. He also knew the background of the issue. Of course, we did give him a bit of information (on Altantuya’s case).

“The main message we got from the attorney-general is that it (reopening the case) won’t be delayed much longer.”

He said Thomas did not indicate when the probe will be reopened.

“The time frame was not discussed. But, he agreed that the new leads can be the basis for the (new) investigation.”

Setev said the message he conveyed to the attorney-general, and which he will convey to Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammad tomorrow, is that he wants to see justice being done.

“There is nobody above the law. I want to ask the prime minister to solve this problem.”

Two policemen – Sirul Azhar Umar and Azilah Hadri – who were once former prime minister Najib Razak’s bodyguards, were found guilty and sentenced to death in 2015.

Azilah is on death row at Kajang Prison, while Sirul is being held in an Australian immigration detention centre after escaping to Australia before sentencing.

Sirul recently offered to testify in exchange for a pardon, but the offer was rejected by Ramkarpal, who is also DAP’s Bukit Gelugor MP.

Sirul’s deportation may be blocked by legal hurdles, as Canberra will not extradite anybody who risked facing the death penalty, reported the Australian SBS news agency recently. – June 19, 2018.