Najib’s children lament Malaysian court ruling – ‘we thought he was coming home’

The children of ex-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak have been yearning for their father to leave prison and the family to spend the New Year together. But their hopes were dashed this week after a court ruled against Najib’s application to return home under house arrest.\nIn a five-minute video posted online shortly after the decision on Monday, Najib’s eldest son, Mohd Nizar Najib, said the family had gone to court prepared for both outcomes, but had quietly believed the long fight – based on a potential reprieve through a disputed royal addendum – would finally bring relief to the family.\n“When I met my father, I saw that he was cheerful in the morning, and he had packed some of his belongings,” he said, as the family prepared for the possibility that he would be “allowed home that very day”.\nThose expectations collapsed when the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled that a purported addendum to a royal clemency order allowing Najib to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest was invalid because it had not been deliberated by the Pardons Board.\nThe decision means Najib, 72, will remain in Kajang Prison, where he is serving a reduced six-year sentence for misappropriating 42 million ringgit (US$10.3 million) linked to SRC International, a former unit of the scandal-tainted 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.\n\nNizar, 47, said the ruling was devastating for the family, not only because of the impact on his father, but because of what they saw as broader implications for Malaysia’s system of royal clemency.\n“The document exists. The order exists,” he said in the video. “What made people angry and disappointed was that its existence was hidden and not acknowledged, until [Najib’s] lawyers were forced to go to court to confirm it.”\nHe added that the judge’s finding that an addendum had no legal effect without it going through the Pardons Board raised serious constitutional questions.\nAnother son, Mohd Nazifuddin Najib, described Monday as “an extremely sad day” for the family in a separate social media post.\n“I know my father. ‘Bossku’ will not give up. He will continue to fight,” Nazifuddin wrote, using Najib’s popular nickname. “But as a son, I cannot help asking: when will all this end? When will it be considered enough?”\nNazifuddin, 42, said the ruling had shaken long-held assumptions about the role of the monarchy, particularly within Umno, the party Najib once led that has historically positioned itself as a defender of royal institutions.\n“In the blink of an eye…any royal decree or document appeared to carry no value without going through government processes. That is a very deep and serious implication for a system we have upheld for decades,” he wrote.\n\n\nAddendum dispute deepens\nNajib’s daughter, Nooryana Najwa, 36, said in a separate social media post on Tuesday night that the judicial review was a last resort, pursued only after months of unanswered letters to government agencies regarding the addendum, including the Attorney General’s Chambers and the Prime Minister’s Office.\nShe said the family had initially tried to resolve the matter quietly, mindful of its political sensitivity and wary of putting any party, including the government, in a difficult position.\nNajib, through his lawyers, had spent months seeking confirmation and recognition of the supposed royal addendum, which the defence said had been issued by the former king, Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration, however, has denied the existence of the supplementary decree, despite the former king’s palace and a federal lawyer earlier this year saying that the document existed.\nIn her ruling on Monday, High Court judge Alice Loke Yee Ching said the Pardons Board did not discuss or deliberate on any addendum order, and the matter had failed to meet constitutional requirements as such.\n\nExplaining the legal basis of the ruling, constitutional lawyer Salim Bashir, a former Malaysian Bar president, said the court made clear that the king could not act outside the Federal Constitution when granting clemency.\n“The decision bolstered the notion that the monarch is subject to the Constitution, and that any irregular decree or decision that was not deliberated by the Pardons Board is deemed irregular, has no binding effect and is susceptible to judicial scrutiny,” he told This Week in Asia.\nNajib’s lawyers have said they will appeal to the Court of Appeal, the country’s second highest court behind the Federal Court of Malaysia.\nOn Friday, the High Court is scheduled to deliver its verdict in Najib’s separate 1MDB trial involving 2.3 billion ringgit allegedly channelled into his bank accounts.\n