Malaysian policeman convicted of killing Mongolian interpreter Altantuya Shaariibuu loses bid for asylum in Australia
- Sirul Azhar Umar and another police officer were sentenced to death in 2015 for the 2006 murder of an interpreter to a former associate of ex-PM Najib Razak
- Altantuya Shaariibuu, a former model, was blown up with military-grade explosives in a forest near Kuala Lumpur in 2006
Shaariibuu was probably blown up with explosives in a forest on the outskirts of Malaysia’s capital in 2006, court records quote a forensic pathologist as saying, in a case shrouded in mystery 13 years later.
Sirul was arrested and has been held in an Australian immigration detention centre since January 2015, after fleeing Malaysia soon before the verdict was handed down.
He lost his bid for asylum on Monday when the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Sydney upheld an earlier ruling that he had committed a “non-political” crime in Malaysia and so was not entitled to protection in Australia.
“None of the findings made by the courts in Malaysia suggested that the crime in question was a political one,” Tribunal Deputy President Brian Rayment said in a written decision first reported by Australian media on Wednesday.