KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s veteran politician and opposition leader Mahathir Mohamad predicted on Tuesday that disgraced former prime minister Najib Razak would be released from jail if his graft-tainted ruling party wins an upcoming general election.
Najib began a 12-year jail term in August after being convicted in the first of several cases related to the looting of billions of dollars from state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
Malaysia is set to hold a general election in the coming weeks after Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob dissolved parliament on Monday, buckling to pressure from factions in the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) that remain loyal to Najib and others charged with corruption.
Speaking a day later, Mahathir warned that UMNO would rush to get Najib released from prison through a royal pardon as well as drop dozens of other corruption charges if it wins the election.
“Should they be able to win and form the government, that is the first objective, not about the welfare of the people,” Mahathir, who had two stints as prime minister, told a news conference.
Criminal prosecution of UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is facing 47 graft charges in a case unrelated to 1MDB, will also be dropped, Mahathir said.
Najib and Zahid have both pleaded not guilty, saying they are victims of a political vendetta.
They were both prosecuted, along with other party leaders, after UMNO lost the 2018 election for the first time in Malaysia’s history as voters punished the party for 1MDB and other corruption scandals.
Having led the country for 22 years until 2003, Mahathir came out of retirement to forge a coalition to defeat Najib, his former protege, but that alliance fell apart in 2020, ending Mahathir’s second stint as prime minister and allowing UMNO to make its way back into power.
Now aged 97, Mahathir said he will defend his parliamentary seat in the election, and that he was willing to work with anyone to defeat UMNO.
UMNO is hoping to win a big enough mandate in the upcoming polls to form the government on its own, without the coalition partners it had under Ismail’s administration.
Despite Najib’s claim of political vengeance, the far ranging 1MDB scandal has implicated financial institutions and high-ranking officials globally. At least six countries opened investigations.
Investigators have said some $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB — co-founded by Najib during his first year as prime minister in 2009 — and that over $1 billion went to accounts linked to Najib.
The US Department of Justice has called it their biggest kleptocracy investigation.
Najib has said he was misled by 1MDB officials.
Other opposition leaders have also slammed UMNO for pushing for early elections at a time when the economy is slowing down.
“One of the explicit or implicit objectives of UMNO in the general election is to free Najib and the other protagonists of the 1MDB scandal from criminal liability,” Lim Kit Siang, a leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party, said in a statement.
Malaysia’s Mahathir fears Najib would walk free if graft-tainted party wins polls
https://arab.news/9yqte
Malaysia’s Mahathir fears Najib would walk free if graft-tainted party wins polls
- Malaysia is set to hold a general election in the coming weeks after Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob dissolved parliament on Monday
- Investigators have said some $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
