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©The
Sun (Used by permission)
by Maria J.Dass
SHAH ALAM (Aug 4, 2008) : Call logs and data submitted by Celcom (M) Bhd tracing
Chief Insp Azilah Hadri’s movements on the night Mongolian woman Altantuya
Shaariibuu was murdered should be excluded as evidence, the High Court was told
today.
Azilah's lawyer J. Kuldeep Kumar submitted that the data should be excluded due
to the various inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and dubious methods of extracting
the data which exposes it to tampering.
The call logs of Oct 19 and the wee hours of Oct 20, 2006 were adduced by the
prosecution to show Azilah’s movements and his whereabouts on the night
Altantuya was murdered.
Azilah and his collegue from the Police Special Action Unit (UTK) Cpl Sirul
Azhar Umar are charged with murdering Altantuya at Mukim Bukit Raja between 10pm
on Oct 19 and 1am on Oct 20, 2006. Political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda is
charged with abetting them.
Kuldeep said there was a break in the chain of events as the call details record
that was tendered in court was actually an extraction of the raw data and the
final product was not signed, verified and authenticated by the Celcom network
engineer or general manager.
He said Celcom (M) Bhd executive Mohd Firdaous Mohd Omar himself agreed that the
data was not accurate because of this, said Kuldeep.
"It is a false document created by Mohd Firdaous which had nothing to do with
data extraction and site name," he said adding that there was also no need for
the call details record to be created as it was sufficient to use the raw data
to present in court.
The call details record was an extraction of the raw data.
Either way, Kuldeep called for all the data presented in court to be thrown out
as they did not come from the source and was therefore exposed to tampering.
Kuldeep said three witnesses from Celcom Mohd Firdaous, Haizal Hambali and Syed
Mustaqim Syed Yusoff discussed what data should be left and taken out and this
amounts to alteration and tampering of evidence from its physical state.
The witnesses had also testified that some data had been omitted and deleted, he
said adding that Mohd Firdaous through his testimony only gave the police what
they wanted and not the call information in its true form.
Kuldeep said the raw data from Firdaous also did not come from the source – the
Celcom system but from his e-mail which makes it susceptible to tampering, and
should therefore be excluded as evidence.
Kuldeep added that there was a break in the chain of evidence as the court was
only informed of this raw data during the re-examination. This information was
concealed by Haizal until the re-examination stage.
"Our contention is that evidence must be tendered as it is, there must not be
alteration," he said, adding that the omission of data amounts to falsifying
documents.
Haizal said he was assigned to locate the scene of the crime using the Celcom
base stations on June 16, 2006 using data on transmission stations marked as
P372B.
"However, P372B was never served on the police, the only document tendered to
the police was the call details record which included data from P372B," added
Kuldeep, before the court stood down for lunch.
When hearing continued in the afternoon, Kuldeep continued with his submission,
saying computer programmer Syed Mustaqim had testified that inconsistencies in
the data wass a symptom of it being corrupted.
"The 117 discrepancies are too many for the court to accept the explanation,
more so when the investigations carried out was much later- about eight months
after the production of the said documents," said Kuldeep.
Referring to Haizal’s testimony, Kuldeep said Celcom often upgrades its network
and therefore the Cell IDs and LACs (Location Area Code) and perimeters covered
by switches changes constantly.
Haizal also told the court that Celcom was constantly upgrading its services and
that there may be up to 100 new base stations set up every month by the
telecommunications company, and the perimeters covered by the switches change
accordingly.
Kuldeep said the last modification on perimeters was made on Nov 18, 2006.
"We submit that the values of the LAC, Cell ID, Service Area Code (SAC) and
switches would have been different as of Oct 19 2006 if the Network Operation
Centre.
Hearing continues tomorrow.
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