KUALA LUMPUR – Sarawak Report founder and editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown will seek to set aside the two-year jail sentence imposed by the Kuala Terengganu magistrates’ court for criminal defamation against Sultanah Nur Zahirah.
Rewcastle-Brown’s lawyer Guok Ngek Seong said the court’s decision on sentencing had contravened criminal law for failing to notify him or his client of the hearing.
As such, Guok will “call for the illegal and irregular decision of the court to be set aside”, according to a post on the Sarawak Report website after the court passed the sentence yesterday.
Guok has also said that a magistrate cannot impose a sentence if the defendant is absent.
Rewcastle-Brown, who lives in the United Kingdom, was not in court yesterday when magistrate Nik Mohd Tarmizie Nik Mohd Shukri sentenced the blogger after finding her guilty under Section 500 of the Penal Code for defaming the Terengganu sultanah in her book The Sarawak Report-The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé.
The defamatory statement on page three of the book contains the reference “the wife of the sultan”, which Sultanah Nur Zahirah claimed had damaged her reputation as the passage was in the same context with information on fugitive Low Taek Jho, who was adviser to the Terengganu Investment Authority, which later became 1Malaysia Development Bhd.
In a separate suit, the sultanah had filed for civil defamation in 2018, demanding RM300 million from Rewcastle-Brown.
In November 2022, the high court ruled in the civil suit that Rewcastle-Brown had not defamed the sultanah, but in December of last year, the royal won her case at the Court of Appeal, which awarded her RM300,000 in damages and held the Sarawak Report editor liable for defamation.
Rewcastle-Brown on her website said that the Sarawak Report’s lawyers had on Tuesday submitted their appeal to the Federal Court to reverse the appellate court’s decision. – February 8, 2024