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.
In 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.
“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”.
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Those 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.
The 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.
Nizar, 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.