KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Najib Razak has issued a letter of demand (LoD) to former attorney-general Tan Sri Tommy Thomas for defaming him in the latter's autobiography, "My Story: Justice in the wilderness".
Najib, who sent the LoD today, is seeking RM10 million in damages and a public apology from Thomas for implicating him in the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu in one of the book's chapters.
The former prime minister's counsel Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, in the LOD, said offending passage was reckless, irresponsible, deliberate, malicious and aimed to lower his client's esteem and good reputation in the eyes of the public.
"Your impugned statements of our client portraying him as a murderer by direct inference and innuendo are wholly untrue, false, frivolous, vexatious and devoid of substance nor evidence.
"It is also clearly motivated by mala fides and was principally done in your selfish pursuit of seeking cheap publicity fueled by your ego, sensationalism, and profiteering.
"Our client's instruction is to institute legal proceedings early next week if we do not receive a satisfactory reply from you by this Friday," he said.
Shafee, in the LOD, said on Jan 31, Thomas had published a book and the alleged defamation was in chapter 42 under the title "Altantuya" which ran from pages 400 to 405.
The chapter is in relation to former chief inspector Azilah Hadri's statutory declaration which claimed that he received a direct order from Najib to kill Altantuya.
"You conveyed the message that as the then AG and public prosecutor, you were satisfied of the truthfulness of the allegations by two convicted persons that our client was involved in directing them to murder Altantuya.
"You have conveyed the message to all readers of your book that irrespective of the decisions of the courts, with respect to the murder trial of the two convicts, our client was nevertheless guilty of directing the murder of Altantuya Shaaribu.
"We are seeking immediate and unequivocal public retraction of the statement from the book that you have published and not to repeat the allegations and comments," he said.
On Dec 8 last year, Azilah, who is on death row, failed to escape the gallows for the murder of Altantuya after the Federal Court maintained his guilty decision.
Azilah along with his partner Sirul Azhar Umar, who now a fugitive in Australia issued a statutory declaration as part of an application in the Federal Court for the review.
A five-man bench led by Chief Judge of Malaya Tan Sri Azahar Mohamed in dismissing Azilah's application ruled that the latter had not shown that there was injustice in his case.
The court also held that Azilah's suppression of evidence that the act of murder was upon the instructions from a third party was not an exceptional circumstance warranting a review.
In delivering the decision, Azahar said Azilah had kept silent about the new evidence which was available in his 32-page statutory declaration (SD) during the investigation, during his trial at the High Court and in his appeals at the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court.