Bengaluru (Karnataka), June 29,2023: The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday declined to dismiss the FIR against Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh, and Supriya Shrinate over alleged “unauthorised” use of music from Kannada film KGF Chapter 2 during the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
A single-judge panel led by Justice M Nagaprasanna rejected the plea. “The petitioner appears to have tampered with the source code without permission, and this undoubtedly constitutes a violation of the company’s copyright,” the High Court said.
The Bengaluru Police had registered a case against Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders following a complaint filed by the MRT music label for the alleged unauthorised use of music from Kannada film KGF Chapter 2 during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in November 2022.
The complaint alleged that the party had posted two videos during the Bharat Jodo Yatra with songs from the movie without permission, in violation of the Copyright Act.
The FIR was registered in the Yashwanthpur police station under the provisions of the Copyright Act, the Information Technology Act, and the Indian Penal Code against Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh, and Supriya of the Congress.
Imphal, June 16,2023: Unknown persons have set ablaze the residence of Union Minister R K Ranjan at Kongba Nandeibam Leikai here in Manipur, police said on Friday.
Residents of the area however managed to douse the fire late on Thursday night.
Some portion of the house and vehicles were burnt.
Ranjan, the Minister of State for Education, was not in his residence when the fire occured Thursday night.
Security has been beefed up in the area.
The authorities have decided to relax curfew will till 1 pm in Imphal West and Imphal East districts. However, there was no relaxation in some vulnerable parts of the state capital.
Manipur government has also extended the ban on internet till June 20.
The ban has been enforced since May 3 when violence started at Chura chandpur district.
Bhubaneswar, June 6,2023: A ten-member team of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday started its probe into Friday’s train accident at Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore district that claimed the lives of 275 people and left over 1,000 injured.
The Railway Board had recommended a CBI inquiry into the horrifying accident involving two superfast trains and one Goods train.
The CBI team accompanied by some Central Forensic members reached the spot at Bahanaga station,visited control room and signal room at Bahanaga Bazar Railway station and held discussion with the railway officials at the station.
The CBI team refused to divulge the details of the investigation process to the waiting newsmen.
On Monday Commissioner of Railway Safety (Southeastern Circle) Sailesh Pathak also conducted a statutory inquiry into the Odisha train tragedy
Pathak reached Bahanaga Bazar station and visited the accident site. He then went to the control room and signal room of the station and discussed with the officials.
New Delhi, May 5,2023: Stepping up its attack on BJP-led government in Manipur over the violence in several parts, the Congress on Friday demanded immediate imposition of President’s Rule in the state.
“Manipur has been burning since the last 3-4 days. The law and order situation has completely broken down,” said Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate referring to the violence in the North Eastern state.
Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of not paying attention to Manipur, Shrinate said, “Where are the PM and HM ? They are busy in Karnataka elections. ”
“The BJP government in Manipur should be dismissed and President’s Rule should be imposed immediately,” she said.
Protests erupted in Manipur on Wednesday against the High Court directive to look into the demand of Meitei to be included in the ST list.
All Tribal Students Union Manipur and some other organisations opposed the decision of the HC and staged protest rallies.
Several houses were burnt in Bishnupur district by miscreants.
April 25,2023: A hotel in Stockholm, an estate agent’s office in London and a space above a noodle shop in New York City’s Manhattan might seem like innocuous places, but they are among several locations around the world that have played host to alleged Chinese police stations.
With most of the identified facilities in Europe and North America, Chinese citizens who have fled repression at home fear they could now be ensnared by the increasingly long arm of Beijing’s law enforcement.
“People are afraid that it is becoming impossible to escape Chinese repression even in places like London,” said Simon Cheng, who was once detained in southern China and is the founder of London-based Hongkongers in Britain.
The existence of the police stations was revealed at the end of last year when Spain-based nongovernmental organisation Safeguard Defenders revealed in two reports based on open-source research that at least 100 police stations had been established outside China by several different Chinese police jurisdictions since 2018.
Aside from a location in Dublin that had a plaque in front reading “Fuzhou Police Service Overseas Station”, most of the stations have operated clandestinely and outside public knowledge.
Among the diaspora communities — from Chinese and Hong Kong dissidents to Tibetans and Uighurs — the stations stand as a warning that without concrete action by the democratic countries in which many of the alleged facilities are operating, there will be few places left in the world where they can be safe from the Chinese state.
After months of inaction, the United States announced its first arrests in connection with the Chinese police stations last week.
At a press conference on April 17, the Justice Department said it had arrested Liu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, on charges of operating a police station on behalf of China, accusing them of engaging in transnational repression against members of the Chinese diaspora community in the US.
The department added that the two reportedly admitted to having deleted correspondence with a Chinese official once they realised they were under investigation. It did not confirm the location of the alleged police station, but the case is suspected to be linked to the Manhattan site, which closed towards the end of last year.
Lu Jianwang leaving the Brooklyn federal court. He is wearing a baseball cap and a face mask and followed by his son who is in a hoodie with the hood up and a facemask.
US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace sought to reassure those diaspora communities that have traditionally been targets of Chinese repression.
“My office and our law enforcement partners are here to protect you and your rights, and no foreign country will stop us from doing that,” he said at the press conference.
Slow response
Other Western countries have yet to make progress on the issue, including the United Kingdom where Cheng was given political asylum in 2020.
Cheng said he was not surprised by the Safeguard Defenders revelations, noting close relationships between several Chinese community leaders in London and Chinese officials not only in the UK but also back in China.
He believes the presence of Chinese police stations is an indication that Chinese law enforcement is becoming more formalised abroad, and that has stirred concern among Hong Kong people in the UK, many of whom left the Chinese city following the imposition of the National Security Law (NSL) nearly three years ago.
“We are particularly concerned that the police stations will be used to implement the National Security Law abroad,” Cheng told Al Jazeera.
The broadly-worded NSL essentially outlawed political action not approved by the Chinese government, but it also threatened extraterritorial application under Article 38 (PDF), which technically gives Chinese authorities the power to prosecute those accused of violating its provisions anywhere in the world.
In Stockholm, meanwhile, the founder of the Swedish Uyghur Committee, Shukur Samsak, is also concerned.
He sees the Chinese police station as a sign of increasing Chinese surveillance of the Uighur community in Sweden.
“When you attend a Uighur demonstration or rally today, there will more and more often be suspicious-looking people on the sidelines that take pictures of you and film you,” he told Al Jazeera.
The establishment of alleged Chinese overseas police stations mirrors the increased repression in China itself, which has become endemic since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
Now in an unprecedented third term and set to rule for life, Xi has presided over a crackdown on dissenting voices from civil society to activists and journalists, and expanded China’s system of detention and incarceration.
A much-trumpeted crackdown on corruption has also netted prominent entrepreneurs and officials, including China’s first-ever president of Interpol who was based in France and disappeared on a trip to China in September 2018.
Eighteen months later, Meng Hongwei was found guilty of corruption by a Chinese court and sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison.
‘They are illegal’
Operating police stations overseas is a major development in Chinese law enforcement, not least because such facilities outside a diplomatic compound are in violation of international law.
In October last year, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin dismissed accusations that China is running illegal police stations as “simply untrue”.
He characterised such stations as “service centres” targeted at Chinese citizens needing help with administrative tasks such as the renewal of passports, which was especially difficult for Chinese living overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic when China closed itself off from the world.
Wang did not elaborate on why such mundane work would need to be carried out covertly.
Laura Harth, the campaign director for Safeguard Defenders, is sceptical of the Chinese denials.
“The first of these stations were established years before COVID so COVID was clearly not a deciding factor,” she said.
“We also found that there is a police station in Frankfurt not far from one of the largest Chinese consulates in Europe so if they were just offering consular services why would they need a space for that right next to a large consulate that already offers these services?”
Even if the police stations are indeed service centres providing administrative services, operating such offices from undisclosed locations in foreign countries would remain illegal under international law, as established in Articles 2 to 5 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (PDF).
“The Chinese authorities had not informed the host countries or gained consent to establish and operate such services so in either case they are illegal,” Harth said.
And while some of these stations might very well have provided administrative services, their purpose goes beyond that.
Chinese dissident Wang Jingyu has said that he was pursued by Chinese police in the Netherlands and received phone calls from people who claimed to be from a Chinese police station in the country. They urged him repeatedly to return to China.
In both domestic and diaspora Chinese media, there have been numerous stories of representatives from several different Chinese police jurisdictions acknowledging and praising the establishment of Chinese overseas police offices throughout the world and the role these have played in returning as many as 230,000 Chinese citizens to China to face allegations of criminality.
In order to convince such overseas Chinese to return to China for prosecution, authorities have also targeted family members back home using threats and intimidation to secure a “voluntary” return. In some cases where such pressure has proved inadequate, the Chinese authorities have resorted to kidnappings instead.
In 2015, Chinese human rights defender Dong Guangping was awaiting resettlement to Canada in a Thai immigration detention centre when Chinese police arrived. They handcuffed him in front of Thai officers and led him away.
When people like Dong are detained and taken to China, their conviction is mostly a foregone conclusion. Chinese courts, controlled by the Communist party, have a conviction rate of more than 99 percent, and during detention and trial defendants often cannot communicate with their lawyers.
Chinese incarceration has also become increasingly opaque in recent years as more and more people are directed through what is known as Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location, a form of secret and extrajudicial detention, and the Liuzhi system where people can end up detained for months without the knowledge of friends and family.
After disappearing from Thailand, Dong eventually resurfaced in China’s detention system. He was released in 2019.
European help
The trail of open-source material left by Chinese media and Chinese authorities in their hunt for people like Dong alerted Safeguard Defenders to the existence of the overseas police stations, Harth told Al Jazeera.
The stations’ contributions to law enforcement operations abroad were regularly praised by Chinese authority figures, and congratulatory stories were published in Chinese state media.
But there are signs that Chinese law enforcement operators had help. In several cases, willing Western governments themselves opened the door to the establishment of secret police stations.
In Italy and Romania, the police stations first appeared following the signing of bilateral police cooperation agreements with China.
In the Italian case, a series of joint police patrols subsequently took place between 2016 and 2019 in major Italian cities such as Milan, Naples and Rome.
Over the same time frame, six Chinese overseas police stations were reportedly set up by a single Chinese police jurisdiction. In the summer of 2018, an unveiling ceremony was held to mark the opening of a Chinese police station in Rome, which was attended by the current head of the Italian State Police Press Office.
The Italian State Police did not reply to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on the matter.
Joint police patrol agreements with China were also inked by Croatia in 2018 and by Serbia the following year.
Such cooperation is an overlooked part of the story, according to Chinese activist and Milan resident Jack Wei.
“There is definitely a lot to blame the Chinese government for, but it’s also important to look at how other governments deal with the Chinese government and what they are willing to accept from it,” he told Al Jazeera.
“I think people should take a look at their own government’s involvement first before criticising China’s government.”
More than 14 governments have launched investigations into the issue since Safeguard Defenders’ revelations last year.
But campaigners say investigations need to go deeper.
“These Chinese overseas police stations are just the tip of the iceberg in a campaign of transnational repression consisting of different actors and different methods that the Chinese authorities employ to intimidate and harass people across the world,” Harth told Al Jazeera.
So far, several police stations in countries including the Netherlands, Sweden and the US have reportedly closed, but few think that closed doors spell an end to Chinese policing itself.
“In that sense the reports on these police stations really just confirmed what we already know: that the Chinese government is increasing its policing and repression efforts both at home and abroad,” said Wei.
New Delhi, April 25,2023: In a fresh crackdown against the cadres of the banned Popular Front of India, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is carrying out searches at more than a dozen locations in parts of the country including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The places being searched by the NIA include 12 in Bihar, two in Uttar Pradesh and one each in Punjab’s Ludhiana and Goa.
The agency is conducting raids in Darbhanga’s Urdu market in Bihar.
According to police sources, the team has reached there to investigate the activities related to the banned PFI organization.
The raid is being done on Dr Sarik Raza, a dentist located in the Urdu Bazaar of Darbhanga city and one Mehboob, a resident of Shankarpur village in Singhwara police station area, in connection with the banned organisation PFI.
In another place in Bihar, Motihari, the NIA team raided the Kuanwa village of Chakia subdivision in the East Champaran district.
A raid is being conducted at Sajjad Ansari’s residence in a case related to PFI. Sajjad is working in Dubai for the last 14 months, sources said.
The NIA team has confiscated Sajjad’s Aadhaar card, PAN card and some documents from his residence, sources added.
The Union Home Ministry had in September last year declared the Popular Front of India (PFI) and its affiliates an ‘Unlawful Association’.
It had said that PFI and its associates or affiliates or fronts have been found to be involved in serious offences, including terrorism and its financing, targeted gruesome killings, disregarding the constitutional set-up of the country, disturbing public order etc. which are prejudicial to the integrity, security and sovereignty of the country.
The Home Ministry said it found it necessary to curb the nefarious activities of the organization. It declared the Popular Front of India (PFI) along with its associates or affiliates or fronts including Rehab India Foundation (RIF), Campus Front of India (CFI), All India Imams Council (AIIC), National Confederation of Human Rights Organization (NCHRO), National Women’s Front, Junior Front, Empower India Foundation and Rehab Foundation, Kerala as “unlawful association” under the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
Guwahati, April 24 ,2023: Pro-Khalistan leader Amritpal Singh has been placed under solitary confinement at the Dibrugarh central jail in Assam.
Amritpal Singh was brought to the Dibrugarh jail in Assam after Punjab police arrested him from the Moga district in the state on Sunday (April 23).
The radical Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh has been booked under the national security act (NSA).
The nine associates of Amritpal Singh, who are also lodged at the Dibrugarh jail in Assam, have also been booked under NSA.
Interestingly, Amritpal Singh and nine of his associates are the only prisoners in the Dibrugarh jail in Assam to be booked under the NSA.
Tehran [Iran], March 13,2023: The Iranian authorities have arrested more than 100 people in connection to the suspected poisoning of Iranian schoolgirls, reported CNN.
Citing a statement from Iran’s Interior Ministry, the state-run IRNA news agency said the people had been “identified, arrested and investigated” in several cities, including the capital Tehran.
“Initial inquiries show that a number of these people, out of mischief or adventurism and with the aim of shutting down classrooms and influenced by the created psychological atmosphere, have taken measures such as using harmless and smelly substances,” the statement read.
Iran has seen a wave of suspected poisonings, carried out almost entirely at girls’ schools, in recent months. The first known incident of schoolgirl poisoning occurred on November 30 in the city of Qom, when about 50 students fell ill and were taken to the hospital.
Another incident in the city took place in February when more than 100 students from 13 schools were hospitalized after what Iranian state news agencies described as “serial poisonings,” reported CNN.
Both the United States and United Nations had called on Iranian authorities to fully investigate the suspected poisonings and hold those responsible to account.
While Iranian politicians have suggested the girls could have been targeted by hardline Islamist groups, activists believe that the poisonings may be linked to the nationwide protests that erupted last September over the death of Mahsa Amini.
Many schoolgirls have been active in the protests, removing their mandatory headscarves in classrooms, tearing up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling for his death, reported CNN.
Medics, parents and teachers have accused the Iranian government of attempting to silence the victims. Many Iranians fear that Islamist hardliners are behind the attacks as their aim is to terrorize the girls and make their families stop sending them to school. Such methods were used by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2010 and more recently by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, which in 2014 kidnapped 276 schoolgirls.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei previously called the suspected poisonings an “unforgivable crime” and called for “severe punishment” for anyone found responsible.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 2,2023: The suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people at a mosque in a police compound in the Pakistan city of Peshawar this week wore a police uniform and entered the high security area on a motorbike, a provincial police chief said on Thursday.
The bomber behind Monday’s attack had been identified as a member of a militant network, Moazzam Jah Ansari, police chief of Khyber Pashtunkhwa province, told reporters without giving further details.
“I admit this was a security lapse. My men could not stop it. This is my fault,” Ansari said.
The bombing was the deadliest in a decade to hit Peshawar, a northwestern city that has suffered decades of Islamist militant violence and is located near the restive Pashtun tribal lands bordering Afghanistan.
It took place as hundreds of worshipers gathered for noon prayers at a mosque that was purpose built for the police and their families inside the high-security Police Lines district.
BEIRUT,Jan 25,2023: The judge probing the 2020 Beirut blast has charged Lebanon’s top public prosecutor, the then-premier and other senior current and former officials in connection with the devastating explosion, judicial sources said and court summons show.
Judge Tarek Bitar unexpectedly resumed an inquiry today after it was paralysed for more than a year by political resistance and legal complaints filed by top officials he was seeking to question.
The explosion on Aug 4, 2020, was caused by hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the port in poor conditions since it was unloaded in 2013.
So far, no senior official has been held to account.
Bitar has charged former prime minister Hassan Diab, former interior minister Nouhad Machnouk and former public works minister Ghazi Zeaiter with homicide with probable intent, according to court summons seen by Reuters today.
He also charged prosecutor-general Ghassan Oweidat, the head of Lebanon’s domestic intelligence agency major-general Abbas Ibrahim, former army commander Jean Kahwaji and other current and former security and judicial officials, court sources said.
It was not immediately clear what they had been charged with, but one judicial source said Bitar had found Oweidat had not acted responsibly with regards to the ammonium nitrate.
Reuters could not immediately reach Diab or Oweidat for comment.
Ibrahim declined to comment on reports he had been charged when contacted by Reuters yesterday.
Kahwaji, Zeaiter and Machnouk declined to comment.
All those previously charged by Bitar have denied wrongdoing.
Oweidat today sent Bitar an official letter saying that Bitar’s probe remained suspended and that no official decision had been taken on whether he could continue investigating, according to a copy of the correspondence seen by Reuters.
Differing opinions within the judiciary over whether Bitar was allowed to resume his probe mean that some of his decisions could go unimplemented, analysts say.
Bitar’s previous efforts to interrogate top officials over the explosion that killed 220 people and shattered parts of Beirut have been hindered by factions including the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah.
A source with knowledge of Hezbollah’s position noted Oweidat’s letter and said that accusing the country’s top prosecutor “would only deepen the crisis”.
The source said the party would “wait and watch the reactions.”
Hezbollah has campaigned against Bitar as he sought to question its allies and it also accused Washington of meddling in the probe.
The US ambassador has denied the accusation.
The embassy today tweeted that the US “supports and urges Lebanese authorities to complete a swift and transparent investigation” into the blast.
The Lebanese judiciary, where appointments depend largely on political backing, has long been prone to political influence.
Bitar’s investigation was paralysed in early 2022 by the retirement of judges from a court that must rule on several such complaints against Bitar before he can continue.
The court has been awaiting the appointment of new judges to resume its work, a step authorities have not taken.
Bitar met French judges visiting Beirut last week as part of a French investigation into the explosion, whose victims included two French nationals.
He was unable to share documents with them at the time because the investigation was frozen.
Bitar resumed work on the basis of a legal interpretation challenging the reasons for its suspension, the judicial sources said.
Diab, an academic, became prime minister in January 2020 and resigned less than a week after the blast.
Bitar’s predecessor swiftly charged him and several former officials with negligence over the chemicals, but that judge was removed in 2021 following political interference in the file.
Diab said in a statement in 2020 that he was confident his hands were clean and that he had dealt transparently with the file of the Beirut port explosion.
Jan 07,2023:At least 29 people, including 10 soldiers, have been killed in an operation to arrest the son of jailed Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s government says after a shootout with cartel members.
Ovidio Guzman, nicknamed “El Raton”, or “The Mouse”, was rounded up early on Thursday in the northern state of Sinaloa and flown to Mexico City on a military plane.
“Ten members of the military … unfortunately lost their lives in the line of duty,” Defence Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters on Friday, adding 19 “lawbreakers” were also killed in the operation. Another 35 soldiers sustained gunshot wounds.
Members of the Sinaloa Cartel and their associates went on a rampage after Ovidio Guzman’s arrest, fighting security forces, setting vehicles on fire and blocking roads across the Pacific coastal state.
The violence was concentrated in and around Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, home of the powerful drug cartel, which “El Chapo” headed before his capture in 2016 and extradition to the United States in 2017.
Feb 23,2023:In a year, thousands of Ukrainian civilians and troops on both sides have been killed in Russia’s war, and tensions between Moscow and the West have risen to an all-time high.
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the invasion he ordered on February 24, 2022, as his United States counterpart Joe Biden was in Poland, rallying support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bemoaned a Russian attack in Kherson, carried out as Putin made his fiery state of the nation speech.
Friday marks the first anniversary of the war the world had feared. Peace seems a distant prospect.
A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, the repercussions continue to reverberate around the world. Not only has the war in Ukraine set off a geopolitical realignment, but it has caused economic hardship far from the epicenter of the fighting.
The Feb. 24, 2022, invasion has touched off a refugee crisis, as Ukrainians flee the conflict in their homeland and many Russian men seek to avoid conscription. Meanwhile, it has spurred a process toward expanding NATO, with Finland and Sweden pursuing membership after decades of official neutrality.
Ukraine and Russia are key exporters of wheat, barley, corn and cooking oil, particularly to African and Middle Eastern countries. Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal last summer to allow Ukrainian grain to pass through Black Sea ports, but Russia is reportedly still hindering shipments. Russia is also a major producer of fertilizer and petroleum. Disruptions to the flow of these goods are compounding other supply chain and climate challenges, driving up food and gas prices and causing shortages in places such as Chad, Tunisia and Sri Lanka.
More than 8 million refugees have fled Ukraine in what the World Health Organization describes as “the largest movement of people in the European Region since the Second World War.” Many have been involuntarily relocated by Russia. Others have put a strain on resources, as well as schools and hospitals, in Poland and Germany.
A 21st century war in Europe — led by a nuclear power — is pushing the world toward realignment. It has rattled NATO, the European Union and the U.N., forcing countries to take sides in ways that have led to escalating tensions and diplomatic shifts. For example, Turkey, despite being a NATO member, has increased trade with Russia since the start of the war and has thrown up objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance.
Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and fuel. European countries have banned the Russian oil, gas and diesel they relied on, which initially caused a steep spike in prices. However, moves by European nations to lock in alternative sources, along with conservation efforts and a mild winter, have largely alleviated those price hikes. Now prices have returned to pre-invasion levels.
ussia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Its attack on Ukraine has notably reenergized NATO, with the U.S. and other member states funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment into Ukraine. Early weapons deliveries included anti-tank rockets such as the U.S.-made Javelin. In the latest moves, the U.S., Germany and Britain have promised to provide state-of-the-art tanks.
Mar 10,2023:Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has been charged with abuse of power and money laundering in connection with the awarding of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Muhyiddin, who led the country from March 2020 through the worst of the pandemic, pleaded not guilty to the six charges at a Kuala Lumpur court on Friday morning.
The charges were filed after Muhyiddin was questioned by investigators from Malaysia’s anti-corruption agency for a number of hours on Thursday over a government support programme that his government introduced to help building contractors during the coronavirus lockdown.
He faces four counts of abuse of power involving 232.5 million ringgit ($51.40 million), and two counts of money laundering involving 195 million ringgit.
Muhyiddin, whose ethnic Malay dominated Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition lost a close-fought election to Anwar Ibrahim’s multi-ethnic rival in November, has previously called the investigation politically motivated.
He is the second former leader to face corruption charges after Najib Razak who was prime minister until May 2018 when his once dominant Barisan Nasional coalition under the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) lost power for the first time amid popular revulsion over the multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB.
Najib began a 12-year prison sentence on 1MDB-related charges last August after Malaysia’s top court dismissed his final appeal. He is also facing a number of other cases related to alleged wrongdoing at the fund.