KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court here has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the Sultanah of Terengganu, Sultanah Nur Zahirah, against Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown and two others.
In his brief decision, Judicial Commissioner Dr John Lee Kien How @ Mohd Johan Lee said the court did not find defamatory imputation from the statements made in the book, The Sarawak Report – The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose.
Despite a factual error in a statement – whereby Rewcastle-Brown had admitted to mistakenly referencing the Sultanah when she meant the Sultan’s sister – the JC said he did not see negative connotations from the two imputations in the case.
“To sum it up, I see no defamatory imputation from the statements although there was obviously a matter of mistaken identity.
“Thus, the plaintiff’s case is hereby dismissed,” he said in Zoom proceedings here yesterday.
The court also ordered RM80,000 in global costs to be paid to the three defendants.
Apart from Rewcastle-Brown, the other two defendants are publisher Gerakbudaya Enterprise’s Chong Tong Sin and printer Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd.
Sultanah Nur Zahirah filed the suit on Nov 21, 2018 against the three defendants for general damages of RM100mil from each of them.
She claimed that the said statement, among others, meant that she was involved in corruption and interfering in the administration of the Terengganu government, besides using her status to influence the establishment of TIA, later known as 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
The plaintiff contended that the statement meant that she had helped fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, to become a TIA adviser.
The three defendants denied making the allegation that the plaintiff was involved in corrupt practice.
Rewcastle-Brown also claimed that Sarawak Report did not suggest that the plaintiff was involved in a conspiracy involving Low, and did not suggest that the plaintiff was involved in the government’s administration over the affairs of 1MDB.
The Sultanah appeared before the court in an online conference on Aug 1, where she testified that she has never interfered in the administration of the state government and did not even know about the setting up of TIA or 1MDB.
Rewcastle-Brown testified via online conference from London and said that it was an “honest mistake” in the passage she wrote in 2018.
“There was no malice in my writing of the passage in the said book.
“I do not know the plaintiff (Sultanah Nur Zahirah) personally and my work has not shown any improprieties on her part. I have no reason to defame her, and I certainly did not intend for the passage to injure her reputation or degrade her.”
