‘Acquitted Umno leaders should sue ex-AG to clear names’

KUALA LUMPUR: Umno leaders who were charged and then acquitted in court should take legal action against former attorney general Tan Sri Tommy Thomas, says Datuk Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki.

“Umno Youth would also like to suggest that all party leaders who have been acquitted sue Thomas, who seems to have ill intent only to embarrass and damage Umno’s reputation with selective political prosecution,” said the Umno Youth chief in his policy speech during the party’s general assembly yesterday.

Thomas was appointed as the attorney general under the Pakatan Harapan government in 2018 but resigned after the administration collapsed in February 2020.

Several Umno leaders, including secretary-general Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan and ex-Johor Baru MP Tan Sri Shahrir, were among those charged in court during Thomas’ tenure.

Asyraf also wanted the government to form a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the disclosures made by Thomas in his autobiography, My Story: Justice in the Wilderness, and take action against him.

He recalled that Thomas previously asserted political interference in the country’s judicial system, adding that the lawyer should face the legal consequences.

On Wednesday, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said said the government had agreed to a proposal to establish a RCI to probe the allegations in Thomas’ memoir.

Published last year, the book came under much criticism, including from the Attorney General’s Chambers, lawyers, politicians and some members of the public, for allegedly containing elements of incitement, insults and defamation.