Arsenic Trial continued
Feb 13th, 2007 by Tian
13 February 2007 (Day 2):
Today we started our trial at 11:00hr. The DPP brought a photographer Inspector Ismail bin Abdul Rahman with the rank of Sergeant to be the witness on the stand. He seemed nervous. Throughout the testimony and cross examination he spoke softly and carefully.
He said that he attended a briefing at Dataran Merdeka by then District Police Chief OCPD Bakri Zinin. The briefing was attended by some 500 police officers of all sections. He also told that the job that day was code named Op Gempur.
He then went to Masjid Negara, at that time it was about 12:45 noon (before Zohor prayer). His responsibility was to take picture of the event. But he told the court he was not given specific instruction to what photos to shoot. So he took pictures randomly.
The DPP then presented a set of photos and negatives. Sgt Ismail was asked to identify the accused from the photos. The guy looked around the court and pointed to me first, after that he named Mohd Ezam, Azmin, Lokman, and Jamal Nasir.
Our defence lawyers objected to this exercise. Azmin’s lawyer Prabha stood up and said: “there is no probative value in such form of identification”.
He went on saying that he took pictures of people gathering in the front compound of Masjid Negara, opposite Pusat Islam. He said he saw Bakri from 30 feet away, but received no specific instruction from his boss.
He lingered around the area until the time of Asal prayer and left under the instruction of Sgt-Major Mohamad Yusof. He also admitted that the assembly was peaceful and provocation. Apart from “Allah’ukbar”, he couldn’t remember any other slogans chanted by demonstrators.
Our lawyers cross-examined him one after the other. The police photographer appeared panic and replied he could not remember to most questions. He could not remember how many people were at the demonstration, what his boss Bakri said during the briefing, how many other photographers were on duty, and so on. He also didn’t take down any notes on the day. He handed over all his films to the Investigation Officer (IO). Since then he had never seen the film and photo until today. But later in cross examination, he contradicted himself by saying that he was asked by the IO to cut out certain negatives for the use of this case.
When he was crossed, he also revealed that he had been assigned similar duty in gatherings prior to our action that day. Since no date or time were printed on the photos, our lawyers had even suggested to him that in actual fact he would not be exactly sure that the set of photos in court today were from 19 September 1999.
The cross examination ended at about 15:30hr. The witness was totally ill-prepared and confessed to have very poor memory. The DPP should realize that this is a complete waste of public fund and our time. It should be thrown out right away.
The case continues tomorrow morning.
Just to refresh our memory: BBC reports on
Arsenic 1: 11 September 1999
Arsenic 2: 19 September 1999