The father of Altantuya Shaariibuu, who was murdered in 2006 by two bodyguards of the detail for officials including former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, said it would be “insane” for the jailed politician to stage a political comeback. 
Shaariibuu Setev, 76, said he doesn’t care if Najib, 72, is allowed to serve the rest of his prison term for corruption at home. The Mongolian spoke in an interview in Hong Kong as his almost two-decade fight for justice over his daughter’s murder draws to a close.
“He has met his end already,” Shaariibuu said of Najib.
“There is nowhere to go. Whether it’s prison or at home, it’s the same.”
Shaariibuu’s comments come as Najib attempts to revive his reputation after being sentenced to 12 years in prison for abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering related to the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal.
Najib had that sentence halved last year and has petitioned the courts to serve the remaining three years or so of his term at home. A Malaysian court recently discharged Najib from a separate set of 1MDB charges without granting him an acquittal.
In October 2006, Altantuya was abducted outside the home of her former lover Abdul Razak Baginda, a former adviser to Najib.
The 28-year-old was then taken to a forest outside Kuala Lumpur, shot twice in the head and blown up with explosives. 
Two secret-service policemen, Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar, who were part of a bodyguard detail for Najib and other senior Malaysian leaders, were convicted of her murder, but a motive was never established. Abdul Razak, who denies involvement, was charged with abetting the murder but later acquitted.
In a statutory declaration from death row in 2019, Azilah said Najib ordered him to kill Altantuya. Sirul has told media including The Sydney Morning Herald that he acted under orders but declined to say who gave them. Najib has consistently denied any role in Altantuya’s death, was never charged and no proof of his involvement has ever been established in court. 
In 2022, Shaariibuu and his family won a civil lawsuit first brought 18 years ago in Malaysia against Azilah, Sirul, Abdul Razak and the government. All of the defendants were found liable for Altantuya’s death and ordered to pay more than RM9 million in damages and costs. Abdul Razak and the government appealed against the ruling, with decisions expected to be handed down in October. The court has said both parties will need to pay RM4.7 million each if they lose.
Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, Najib’s lawyer, didn’t comment when asked about Shaariibuu's comments and the former prime minister's involvement in the case.
A post on Najib’s Facebook page on July 2 said that he sued former attorney general Tan Sri Tommy Thomas in 2021 to “prove to the world that all the allegations regarding Najib’s involvement in the Altantuya case are purely slander”.  The defamation suit is ongoing. 
Thomas, who charged Najib for 1MDB crimes, wrote about the Altantuya murder case in his memoir.
“The trial heard how she was murdered, which was certainly in the most gruesome way, but no motive or reason was ever pursued or established for doing this,” he wrote.
Shaariibuu, a retired academic who peppers his speech with Mongolian sayings, has been the face of the family’s campaign for justice for his daughter since her murder, appearing frequently in Malaysia since the days after her death. He doesn’t speak English, communicating instead through a Mongolian lawyer who has worked with him for almost two decades.
Last October, a letter by Shaariibuu requesting that Azilah not be executed for murdering Altantuya was read out in the Federal Court. He made an argument against capital punishment, emphasising a respect for the sanctity of human life. 
During the interview in Hong Kong, Shaariibuu revealed that other considerations informed his strategy. One was a Mongolian belief that you “cannot defeat sin with another sin”, he said.
Another was a concern that if Azilah was put to death, it would remove one of the remaining people who could tell the full story of what happened to his daughter.
“If he is executed, the witness is gone,” he said.
“Getting executed is easy,” he added. “But I want him to suffer all his life.”
The Federal Court commuted Azilah’s death sentence in October, giving him 40 years in prison and 12 strokes of the cane instead. Prisoners on death row were allowed to apply to have their sentences reviewed after the country abolished the mandatory death penalty in 2023. 
A lawyer for Azilah didn’t respond to a request for comment. 
In 2014, Sirul fled to Australia, which won’t extradite people to countries where they would face the death penalty, while out on bail before the final court ruling in 2015 that convicted him of Altantuya’s murder. Australian authorities subsequently released him from immigration detention. Shaariibuu called on Australia to send Sirul home now that Malaysia has abolished the mandatory death penalty, saying it was wrong for him to be walking free.
Sirul’s immigration lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. Australia’s Department of Home Affairs said it can’t comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.
Over the course of two days of interviews in Hong Kong, Shaariibuu recounted the damage Altantuya’s murder had wrought on his family, saying it left two children without a mother, including one who was disabled and later died. Shaariibuu’s wife, too, later passed away. He said that even though his lawyers in Malaysia and Mongolia worked pro bono, he had to sell his home to pay some expenses related to the legal cases.
But the self-confessed movie buff retained a sense of humour, making jokes about horses and sheep in Mongolia as he discussed the events that shaped his life. Hailing from the Gobi Desert, he shivered in the cold Hong Kong air-conditioning as he complained about why it has taken so long for his daughter’s case to wind through Malaysia’s courts. He said it had been delayed because of politics, but he remained patient.
“I am smarter than them all,” he said. “I will prevail.”

Published Date:2025-08-13