DEPUTY public prosecutors (DPPs) have received guidelines to ensure the proper administration of justice in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, said Attorney-General Idrus Harun.

“DPPs have been issued guidelines, especially in these difficult times, to ensure the proper administration of justice. To this end, the DPPs, as well as the police and the courts, have been working hard under novel conditions while potentially exposing themselves to the risk of infection,” he said in a statement today.

Idrus was responding to an article by Eliminating Deaths and Abuse In Custody (EDICT) Malaysia entitled “The Attorney General must rein in prosecutors”, which claimed the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) has failed to issue guidelines to prosecutors to ensure even-handed implementation and enforcement of the movement control order (MCO).

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said, adding that guidelines and directives are regularly issued to DPPs who are also governed by a code of ethics.

Monitoring of court cases involving breaches of MCO is done every day by the head of the prosecution division and his deputies, Idrus said.

DPPs are required to send a report on those cases daily to the A-G.

“As an example, DPPs were reminded most recently to be particularly sensitive to cases involving juveniles to ensure they are not remanded except in the most unavoidable of circumstances and they are treated in accordance with the Child Act in a Court for Children.

“That said, it must be remembered that some matters, like remands and sentencing, are not powers within the purview therefore control of the attorney-general.”

Idrus maintained that actions and decisions of the Attorney General as well as those of the DPPs are based on powers and responsibilities conferred by the Federal Constitution and the law.

“EDICT appears to have made the erroneous assumption that just because they have not sighted any directives or guidelines by the Attorney General therefore there must be none. As stated earlier, this is completely not true.

“AGC, being a public institution, welcomes criticisms of its actions provided always they are constructive and based on facts duly established and not on conjecture and diatribe which are clearly not fact-checked.” – April 27, 2020.