high court judge rules that the deputy prime minister doesn’t need to
answer questions about a murder

A Malaysian High Court judge dismissed a bid Wednesday to call Deputy
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as a witness in the marathon trial of
one of his best friends and two of his bodyguards for the murder of
Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu.

Najib‘s name has come up repeatedly outside the courtroom because of
his closeness to Altantuya’s former lover, Abdul Razak Baginda, who
faces a possible death penalty along with the two bodyguards. Judge
Mohd Zaki Yasin also refused to call to the stand private investigator
P. Balasubramaniam, who two weeks ago made an extraordinarily detailed
written declaration that implicated Najib heavily in the events
leading up to the gruesome October 2006 murder of the translator.