KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian court threw out more than a dozen money laundering and tax evasion charges on Thursday lodged against the wife of jailed former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.
Rosmah Mansor, 73, faced 12 charges of money laundering involving 7.1 million ringgit ($1.6 million) and five charges of failing to declare her income between December 4, 2013, and June 8, 2017.
High Court judge K. Muniandy struck out all 17 charges, saying they lacked “probity, propriety and legality” and ordered a “discharge amounting to an acquittal,” according to a copy of the decision seen by AFP.
The Attorney-General’s office said it would appeal against the decision, Malaysian media reported.
Rosmah was sentenced to 10 years in jail on separate graft charges in September 2022 but has appealed against that conviction and remains free on bail.
She was charged in that case with seeking and receiving bribes for helping a company secure a solar power project for rural schools in the Malaysian section of Borneo island during her husband’s rule.
Rosmah has long been criticized by Malaysians for her reported vast collection of designer handbags, clothing and jewelry, acquired on overseas shopping trips.
Her collection of luxury items came under the spotlight after police raids on their family home in 2018 following her husband’s election defeat.
It drew unflattering comparisons with former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos and contributed to accusations that the ousted ruling establishment had lost touch with economically struggling and middle-class Malaysians.
Najib is serving a six-year jail term for corruption related to a massive financial scandal at sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.
He has filed an appeal to serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest and a hearing has been fixed for January 6.
The 1MDB scandal, allegedly involving billions of dollars siphoned from the now-defunct state company, sparked investigations in the United States, Switzerland and Singapore.
Wife of jailed former Malaysian PM Najib Razak acquitted in latest graft case
https://arab.news/4evtz
Wife of jailed former Malaysian PM Najib Razak acquitted in latest graft case
- Rosmah Mansor faced 12 charges of money laundering and five charges of failing to declare her income
- Rosmah was sentenced to 10 years in jail on separate graft charges in September 2022 but has appealed
A Tunisian musician was detained in LA after living in US for a decade. His doctor wife speaks out
- The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has ensnared not only immigrants without legal status but legal permanent residents like Othmane who has green cards
LOS ANGELES: Dr. Wafaa Alrashid noticed fewer of her patients were showing up for their appointments at the Los Angeles area hospital where she works as immigration raids spread fear among the Latino population she serves.
The Utah-born chief medical officer at Huntington Hospital understood their fear on a personal level. Her husband Rami Othmane, a Tunisian singer and classical musician, began carrying a receipt of his pending green card application around with him.
Over the past few months, immigration agents have arrested hundreds of people in Southern California, prompting protests against the federal raids and the subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines. Despite living in the US for a decade as one of thousands of residents married to US citizens, he was swept up in the crackdown.
On July 13, Othmane was stopped while driving to a grocery store in Pasadena. He quickly pulled out his paperwork to show federal immigration agents.
“They didn’t care, they said, ‘Please step out of the car,’” Alrashid recalled hearing the officers say as she watched her husband’s arrest in horror over FaceTime.
Alrashid immediately jumped in her car and followed her phone to his location. She arrived just in time to see the outline of his head in the back of a vehicle driving away.
“That was probably the worst day of my life,” she said.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has ensnared not only immigrants without legal status but legal permanent residents like Othmane who has green cards. Some US citizens have even been arrested. Meanwhile, many asylum-seekers who have regular check-in appointments are being arrested in the hallways outside courtrooms as the White House works toward its promise of mass deportations.
Alrashid said her husband has been in the US since 2015 and overstayed his visa, but his deportation order was dismissed in 2020. They wed in March 2025 and immediately filed for a green card.
After his arrest, he was taken to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in downtown Los Angeles where he was held in a freezing cold room with “no beds, no pillows, no blankets, no soap, no toothbrushes and toothpaste, and when you’re in a room with people, the bathroom’s open,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security in an emailed statement noted the expiration of his tourist visa but did not address the dismissal of the deportation order in 2020 nor his pending green card application.
The agency denied any allegations of mistreatment, and said “ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.”
Alrashid said for years her husband has performed classical Arabic music across Southern California. They first met when he was singing at a restaurant.
“He’s the kindest person,” Alrashid said, adding that he gave a sweater she brought him to a fellow detainee and to give others privacy, he built a makeshift barrier around the open toilet using trash bags.
“He’s brought a lot to the community, a lot of people love his music,” she said.
More than a week after his arrest, fellow musicians, immigration advocates and activists joined Alrashid in a rally outside the facility.
A few of his colleagues performed classical Arabic music, drumming loud enough that they hoped the detainees inside could hear them. Los Jornaleros del Norte musicians, who often play Spanish-language music at rallies, also were there.
“In Latin American culture, the serenade — to bring music to people — is an act of love and kindness. But in this moment, bringing music to people who are in captivity is also an act of resistance,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Leading up to the rally, Alrashid was worried because she hadn’t received her daily call from her husband and was told she couldn’t visit him that day at the detention facility. She finally heard from him that evening.
Othmane told her over the phone he was now at an immigration detention facility in Arizona, and that his left leg was swollen.
“They should ultrasound your leg, don’t take a risk,” she said.
Alrashid hopes to get her husband out on bail while his case is being processed. They had a procedural hearing on Thursday where the judge verified his immigration status, and have a bail bond hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Until then, she’ll continue waiting for his next phone call.
Kyiv comes under Russian missile attack as Ukrainian drones set homes on fire in Russia’s Voronezh
KYIV: Russia and Ukraine exchanged missile and drone strikes early Sunday, resulting in more homes and utility buildings destroyed, officials from the warring neighbors said.
Kyiv came under Russian missile attack and witnesses said they heard a loud blast shaking the capital city soon after midnight Saturday, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said on its Telegram messaging app.
In the southern Russian region of Voronezh, a woman sustained a leg injury from Ukraine’s overnight drone attack that also resulted in several homes and utility buildings catching fire from falling drone debris, the governor said.
Air defense units destroyed about 15 Ukrainian drones over the region, Governor Alexander Gusev, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“The threat of further drone attacks remains,” Gusev said in the post early on Sunday.
Reuters could not independently verify Gusev’s report. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in their strike in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.
Kyiv says that its attacks inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s war efforts and are in response to Russia’s relentless strikes on Ukraine.
The Russian defense ministry said that its units destroyed 41 drones just before midnight on Saturday over Russian regions bordering Ukraine and over the waters of the Black Sea.
IAEA reports hearing explosions, sees smoke near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday that its team at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) heard explosions and saw smoke coming from a nearby location.
The nuclear plant said one of its auxiliary facilities was attacked today, IAEA said in a statement.
“The auxiliary facility is located 1,200 meters from the ZNPP’s site perimeter and the IAEA team could still see smoke from that direction in the afternoon,” the nuclear watchdog said.
Ukraine hits military targets and pipeline in Russia
- Ukraine’s SBU security service said the strikes, carried out Friday night by long-distance drones, hit a military airfield in the southwestern town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk
- They caused a fire in an areas where Iranian-built Shahed drones were stored
KYIV: Ukraine said Saturday it hit military targets and a gas pipeline in drone attacks in Russia, where local authorities said three people were killed and two others wounded.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said the strikes, carried out Friday night by long-distance drones, hit a military airfield in the southwestern town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk.
They caused a fire in an areas where Iranian-built Shahed drones — relied on by Russia to attack Ukraine — were stored, the SBU said.
It said the strikes also hit a company, Elektropribor, in Russia’s southern Penza region, which it said “works for the Russian military-industrial complex,” making military digital networks, aviation devices, armored vehicles and ships.
The governor for the Penza region, Oleg Melnichenko, said on Telegram that one woman had been killed and two other people were wounded in that attack.
Russia’s defense ministry said its air-defense systems had destroyed 112 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory — 34 over the Rostov region — in a nearly nine-hour period, from Friday night to Saturday morning.
An elderly man was killed inside a house that caught fire due to falling drone debris in the Samara region, governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev posted on Telegram.
In the Rostov region, a guard at an industrial facility was killed after a drone attack and a fire in one of the site’s buildings, acting Rostov governor Yuri Sliusar said.
“The military repelled a massive air attack during the night,” destroying drones over seven districts, Sliusar posted on Telegram.
Ukraine has regularly used drones to hit targets inside Russia as it fights back against Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022.
Russia, too, has increasingly deployed the unmanned aerial devices as part of its offensive.
An AFP analysis published on Friday showed that Russia’s forces in July launched an unprecedented number of drones, 6,297 of them.
The figure included decoy drones sent into Ukraine’s skies in efforts to saturate the country’s air-defense systems.
In Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian drone attacks Friday night wounded three people, governor Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram.
Several buildings, homes and cars were damaged, he said.
Russian forces have claimed advances in Dnipropetrovsk, recently announcing the capture of two villages there, part of Moscow’s accelerated capture of territory in July, according to AFP’s analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Kyiv denies any Russian presence in the Dnipropetrovsk area.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire in the more than three-year conflict, said Friday that he wanted peace but that his demands for ending Moscow’s military offensive were “unchanged.”
Those demands include that Ukraine abandon territory and end ambitions to join NATO.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said only Putin could end the war and renewed his call for a meeting between the two leaders.
“The United States has proposed this. Ukraine has supported it. What is needed is Russia’s readiness,” he wrote on X.
More clashes and arrests at UK immigration protests
- Demonstrators calling for mass “remigration” gathered in central Manchester
- In central London, rival demonstrators converged outside a hotel housing asylum seekers
MANCHESTER: Further scuffles broke out at anti-immigration protests in the UK on Saturday, with police making several arrests.
Demonstrators calling for mass “remigration” gathered in central Manchester, northwest England, for a march organized by the far-right “Britain First” group, which was confronted by anti-racism groups.
Meanwhile in central London, rival demonstrators converged outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, following similar recent events that have occasionally turned violent.
In Manchester, the two groups clashed briefly at the start of the protest before police split them up, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
“Send them back, don’t let them in — just stop them coming in, we’ve got hotels full of immigrants and we’ve got our own homeless people in the streets begging for food but nowhere to live,” said protester Brendan O’Reilly, 66.
Counter-protester Judy, a 60-year-old retired nurse, told AFP she was there “because I don’t want to see people full of hate on the streets of Manchester.”
“Do they want them all to go back or is it just people with brown skin? I suspect it’s just people with brown skin that they want to re-migrate,” she added.
In London, similar clashes erupted outside a hotel in the Barbican neighborhood before police intervened.
Metropolitan Police wrote on X that officers had cleared a junction where counter-protesters had assembled in breach of the conditions in place.
“There have been nine arrests so far, with seven for breaching Public Order Act conditions,” added the force.
There have been several flashpoints around the UK in recent weeks, most notably in the north-east London neighborhood of Epping.
