CONVICTED former prime minister Najib Razak has filed for defamation against former attorney-general Tommy Thomas and publisher GB Gerakbudaya Sdn Bhd over passages in the bestselling autobiography My Story: Justice in the Wilderness.

Najib, the MP for Pekan, alleged that Thomas had made “very serious defamatory statements” in Chapter 42 regarding the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu.

“A large but unverified number of readers said impugned statements would easily identify Najib as being the person written about, purportedly criminally linked to the heinous crime,” said the statement of claim sighted by The Malaysian Insight.

Messrs Shafee and Co, representing Najib, filed the suit at Shah Alam High Court today.

Najib is seeking unspecified damages and wants words and statements deemed defamatory to be removed from the memoir.

Najib also wants an apology from Thomas and GB Gerakbudaya Enterprise Sdn Bhd and a permanent injunction that they will not publish anything defamatory about him in future.

Today’s filing comes a day after it was reported that Najib had also sued Thomas and the government for “malicious prosecution”.

My Story: Justice in the Wilderness was published and distributed in Malaysia from late January, and later distributed overseas.

“Despite the gravity of the allegations made by Thomas and Gerakbudaya, they published without any attempt to verify the facts with Najib or afford any opportunity for Najib to comment,” the statement said.

Prior to this filing, Najib said, on February 2, he had written a letter of demand to Thomas, which the senior lawyer rebuffed on February 4.

Najib also said he similarly wrote to Gerakbudaya on February 3, which was similarly rejected.

“Unless restrained by the court, Thomas and Gerakbudaya will continue to further publish the defamatory statements against Najib,” the statement said.

Najib is also demanding interest at the rate of 5% per annum on the sum of damages from the date of the filling. – October 27, 2021.