Pastor Koh abduction was 'professionally done' - Witness
A witness to the 2017 enforced disappearance of Pastor Raymond Koh described the whole operation as “professionally done”.
Lawyer Roeshan Celestine Gomez today was testifying for the missing man’s family during the full hearing of their lawsuit to compel the police to divulge the whereabouts of Koh (above), who had been missing for over six years.
"The whole job was professionally done, they had resources,” the first witness told the family's lawyer Jerald Gomez during examination-in-chief before the High Court in Kuala Lumpur.
The open-court proceeding before judicial commissioner Su Tiang Joo is the first day of trial of the family’s civil action over the incident that saw Koh being abducted from his car in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, on Feb 13, 2017.
During the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) inquiry into Koh’s disappearance on Oct 19, 2017, Roeshan had testified that the investigating officer (IO) in the case described the abduction as “looked very much like the modus operandi of a police operation”.
The lawyer then was describing what the IO allegedly told him after he had lodged a police report at the Kelana Jaya police station regarding the abduction about an hour after the incident.
On April 3, 2019, Suhakam concluded that Koh’s abduction was an enforced disappearance that involved the Special Branch from police federal headquarters in Bukit Aman, Kuala Lumpur.
A year later before the civil court, Koh’s wife Susanna Liew Sow Yoke filed a writ of summons against the police to compel the authorities to reveal his whereabouts.
Susanna Liew Sow Yoke
During court proceedings while on the witness stand, Roeshan said he and a friend had just left St Ignatius church in Kelana Jaya and were on their way to a crematorium in Kampung Tunku when they came across the commotion at Jalan Bahagia around 10.45am that day.
The witness said that there were around four black SUVs which surrounded a car that looked like a silver Proton Waja, and that around five men who were masked and dressed in black military outfits from top to bottom appeared to be pulling a man out of the car.
In reply to questions by Jerald, Roeshan said the man - whom he later found out was Koh - was putting up resistance that resulted in “much pushing and pulling”, and that there were motorcycles circling around nearby.
The witness told the court that as his friend was about to record the incident on her phone, an agitated-looking man appeared in front of their car and gestured to her to stop recording, to which she immediately put the phone down.
Roeshan said that a second, unarmed man then approached the car in a “lively fashion” and instructed him to reverse back, to which the witness complied out of fear for the safety of himself and his friend.
Happened so fast
The witness recalled that there was a motorcycle outrider who signalled for him to leave the scene, saying that he was between 30 and 40 metres away from the abduction scene.
Roeshan said as he was reversing his car, the commotion ended, with all the other cars speeding off, and that it happened so fast that he was unable to take down the vehicles’ licence plates, which included a golden Toyota Vios.
“All the black SUVs and the silver Proton Waja drove off. The golden Toyota Vios and two motorcycles followed them thereafter. I stayed at the side of the same road for about another minute.
“After that, I continued my drive along the same road in an attempt to follow them. I noticed shattered glass on the road. I did not see any other items such as a car’s number plate. I could not see any of their cars and proceeded to head towards the cremation ceremony in Bukit Tunku,” Roeshan said, adding that the whole incident only lasted around a minute.
He said he assumed Koh was driven away as the latter’s car window was smashed as seen by the shattered glass on the road.
Identification parade
The lawyer said after he lodged the police report, he attended an identification parade at the Petaling Jaya district police headquarters on July 7, 2017, whereby he said none of the suspects rounded up for the parade matched the people he saw during the incident.
The trial before Su resumes tomorrow. Senior federal counsel Nurul Farhana Khalid appeared for the 13 defendants, who included the police and the federal government.
The defendants’ legal team is set to cross-examine Roeshan tomorrow.
Besides Koh, Suhakam had also ruled that activist Amri Che Mat was a victim of enforced disappearance involving the Special Branch and the police force.
Amri was abducted sometime around midnight on Nov 24, 2016.
In November 2019, Amri’s wife Norhayati filed a suit against 21 defendants in relation to her husband’s disappearance, including some of the same defendants named in Liew’s suit.
During court proceedings while on the witness stand, Roeshan said he and a friend had just left St Ignatius church in Kelana Jaya and were on their way to a crematorium in Kampung Tunku when they came across the commotion at Jalan Bahagia around 10.45am that day.
The witness said that there were around four black SUVs which surrounded a car that looked like a silver Proton Waja, and that around five men who were masked and dressed in black military outfits from top to bottom appeared to be pulling a man out of the car.
In reply to questions by Jerald, Roeshan said the man - whom he later found out was Koh - was putting up resistance that resulted in “much pushing and pulling”, and that there were motorcycles circling around nearby.
The witness told the court that as his friend was about to record the incident on her phone, an agitated-looking man appeared in front of their car and gestured to her to stop recording, to which she immediately put the phone down.
Roeshan said that a second, unarmed man then approached the car in a “lively fashion” and instructed him to reverse back, to which the witness complied out of fear for the safety of himself and his friend.
Happened so fast
The witness recalled that there was a motorcycle outrider who signalled for him to leave the scene, saying that he was between 30 and 40 metres away from the abduction scene.
Roeshan said as he was reversing his car, the commotion ended, with all the other cars speeding off, and that it happened so fast that he was unable to take down the vehicles’ licence plates, which included a golden Toyota Vios.
“All the black SUVs and the silver Proton Waja drove off. The golden Toyota Vios and two motorcycles followed them thereafter. I stayed at the side of the same road for about another minute.
“After that, I continued my drive along the same road in an attempt to follow them. I noticed shattered glass on the road. I did not see any other items such as a car’s number plate. I could not see any of their cars and proceeded to head towards the cremation ceremony in Bukit Tunku,” Roeshan said, adding that the whole incident only lasted around a minute.
He said he assumed Koh was driven away as the latter’s car window was smashed as seen by the shattered glass on the road.
Identification parade
The lawyer said after he lodged the police report, he attended an identification parade at the Petaling Jaya district police headquarters on July 7, 2017, whereby he said none of the suspects rounded up for the parade matched the people he saw during the incident.
The trial before Su resumes tomorrow. Senior federal counsel Nurul Farhana Khalid appeared for the 13 defendants, who included the police and the federal government.
The defendants’ legal team is set to cross-examine Roeshan tomorrow.
Besides Koh, Suhakam had also ruled that activist Amri Che Mat was a victim of enforced disappearance involving the Special Branch and the police force.
Amri was abducted sometime around midnight on Nov 24, 2016.
In November 2019, Amri’s wife Norhayati filed a suit against 21 defendants in relation to her husband’s disappearance, including some of the same defendants named in Liew’s suit.
Methinks the police were covering up for some other groups, either linked to the police itself, or other official bodies.
ReplyDeleteReally scary to realise there really is a "government within the government " in Malaysia.
One usually assumes such things happen in South American dictatorships or corrupt African states.