Teoh Beng Hock’s family to police: Focus on MACC officials, leave our ageing parents out of it

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 3 — The police should investigate the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officials who were allegedly involved in Teoh Beng Hock’s 2009 death, his family said today.

The family’s representative Teoh Lee Lan, who is also Beng Hock’s sister, said the police should not be summoning the family in again.

“The police should immediately reopen the investigation and urgently arrest and interrogate the implicated MACC officials,” she said on behalf of the family in a statement posted on her Facebook page today.

She said the family is shocked by Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Mohd Shuhaily Mohd Zain’s statement that the family may even be called in to give statements to the police.

“Is this to force Beng Hock’s ageing parents and heartbroken widow to revisit a past they desperately wanted to move on with a closure?” she questioned.

Among other things, she said the family had suggested to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim that an international investigation team could be set up to carry out an independent and professional investigation of the case.

She claimed that the five MACC officials who were allegedly involved in her brother’s death had been promoted within the MACC.

“When we asked the prime minister to immediately suspend them while waiting for investigations, the prime minister declined to comment further,” she said, adding that state officials should be temporarily suspended to allow for impartial investigations and that this is within the prime minister’s power to do so.

On Thursday, the family met with the prime minister to ask for his help to look into the delay in the investigation of Beng Hock’s death and for the police to complete the investigation promptly.

Following the meeting, the prime minister on the same day wrote on Facebook that the government agrees for the police to reopen the investigation paper on Beng Hock’s death, and gave his assurance that the investigation this time would be carried out transparently and fairly without intervention from any quarters.

Yesterday, Mohd Shuhaily was reported saying that the police would reopen investigations once the order is given to do so, and that it is highly likely that the police would call in all involved including Teoh’s family members if the case is reopened.