KUALA LUMPUR: Former Attorney-General Tan Sri Tommy Thomas has responded to former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's letter of demand (LoD) seeking a public apology for allegedly defaming him in the controversial memoir, "My Story: Justice in the Wilderness".
Thomas responded to Najib via a letter dated Feb 4 from the firm Tommy Thomas Advocates and Solicitors, addressed to the former Umno president's lawyer, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.
In the letter, the firm said that it was acting for Thomas and wanted to respond to the LoD, which was sent to him on Feb 2.
It denied all the allegations made by Najib in the LoD.
"Our client denies all material allegations in your letter. Furthermore, our client denies that he has committed the tort of defamation against your client, as alleged or at all.
"We have instructions to accept service of process. All our client's rights are reserved," the letter read.
It was reported that Najib had sent the LoD to Thomas, seeking RM10 million in damages and a public apology.
Najib made the demand after alleging Thomas had implicated him in the murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu in one of the book's chapters.
Najib said the offending passage was reckless, irresponsible, deliberate, malicious and aimed to lower his esteem and good reputation in the eyes of the public.
In the LoD, Shafee had alleged that the impugned statements of his client, portraying Najib as a murderer by direct inference and innuendo – was wholly untrue, false, frivolous, vexatious and devoid of substance and evidence.
"It is also clearly motivated by mala fides and was principally done in your selfish pursuit of seeking cheap publicity fuelled 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 Friday, Feb 5," 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 runs 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 Shaariibuu.
"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 is 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 of a third party is 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.