Canberra, Australia – For the past nine years, 52-year-old Sirul Azhar Umar has been locked up in an Australian detention center for overstaying his tourist visa.

On November 8, 2023, Australia’s Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal to detain non-citizens indefinitely who could not be deported.

The former police officer was one of these prisoners and was subsequently released. Sirul was sentenced to death in his native Malaysia for the brutal murder of a 28-year-old Mongolian translator in 2006, but Australian law bars the return of foreigners to countries where they face the death penalty.

Now living with his 23-year-old son in the Australian capital Canberra for the first time, Sirul speaks about the murder for which he was convicted in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera’s 101 East.

The murder

One night in October 2006, Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu was abducted from her former lover’s home and driven to a jungle on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, where she was shot with military-grade explosives and blown up.

The kidnappers were Sirul and his superior Azilah Hadri, both members of Malaysia’s then deputy prime minister Najib Razak’s elite security unit.

“Azilah told me this [was a] Special operation for…Mr Najib,” says Sirul. “And I simply obey because he is my superior.”

Shaariibuu’s ex-lover was Abdul Razak Baginda, an adviser and confidant of Najib.

Baginda brokered an allegedly corrupt multi-billion dollar submarine deal between Malaysia and France, signed by Najib when he was defense minister in 2002.

Shaariibuu had accompanied Baginda to Paris and was said to have pushed for payment of the $500,000 she was owed for helping with the deal in 2006.

“Azilah told me, ‘This girl is bothering Razak,'” Sirul recalls, emphasizing that he was never at the crime scene and that the last time she saw Shaariibuu was when she was still alive.

“I didn’t commit murder. But yes, I’m involved. I get [her] from Razak Baginda’s house,” he says. “And then I gave [her] to Azilah… and then… I don’t know anything.”

No motive

The bodyguards were convicted of Shaariibuu’s murder in 2009 and sentenced to death, but a motive was never determined.

According to a police statement that the Malaysian court deemed involuntary and therefore inadmissible, Sirul confessed to shooting Shaariibuu in the left side of her head.

But in an unsworn statement to the court, he said he was a “scapegoat to protect… those who were not in court.”

Baginda was charged with accessory to murder but never stood trial as a court of inquiry found he had no case to make.

In 2013, Sirul’s conviction was overturned, but when it was reinstated on appeal two years later, he was in Australia with relatives.

Days later, Sirul sent a text message seen by 101 East to a politically connected businessman in Malaysia, Abdul Salam Bin Ahmad, demanding millions of dollars.

“Greetings boss. I’m in trouble here. I want 2 million Australian dollars in front of the boss [you] Come meet me. I have to guarantee my child’s future here, after that I want 15 million… Australia. I will not return to Malaysia, ever boss. I will not overthrow the Prime Minister,” he wrote.

But Sirul now says the text message was not his idea and claims: “I had instructions from Mr Salam.” In his reply, Salam wrote: “They will discuss.” According to Sirul, he was referring to Najib. “It’s about getting some money or something from Najib,” he says.

Sirul claims he has been manipulated for political purposes since the murder.

Paid for silence

In 2016, Sirul recorded and distributed a video in an Australian immigration detention center clearing Najib of any involvement in Shaariibuu’s murder.

“Dato’ Seri Najib Razak was not involved and has no relevance to the case,” he said in the video.

Now, he claims, he wants to “tell the truth.”

“This is Australia. “Everyone can talk, right?” he says. “I want to uncover and [tell] the truth now.”

Sirul claims he was paid more than $200,000 for producing the video. “My lawyer offered me a lot of money,” he says.

“So they offered me some money and gave it to me. I spent on my son because I love my son. My son will grow up here…spend a lot of money, study here [in Australia], everything. And my daughter too.

“So far I have someone [who] controls me. “Umar, you don’t talk. You are silent’.”

He claims he doesn’t know who paid him the money, adding that he never paid his lawyers in Malaysia or Australia.

But he is clear about who he should protect with his silence.

“Frankly, I will tell you specifically to protect… the then prime minister, Mr Najib.”

Sirul says he doesn’t know exactly why the hush money was paid, but suspects that what he might have revealed about his conversations with Azilah would have had political consequences for Najib. Although Najib denied any involvement in the murder, his political career was plagued by widespread speculation linking him to Shaariibuu’s assassination.

Sirul claims that all evidence presented to the court is “fake” and denies any knowledge of Shaariibuu’s jewelry found in his jacket in his wardrobe and blood-stained slippers found in his car.

He cites the appeal court’s 2013 decision to overturn his 2009 conviction as evidence that the evidence against him was weak and further speculates that Najib interfered in the court to ensure that the Conviction was reinstated in 2015. “You have no one to blame,” he says.

Dangerous freedom

Two days after his release from immigration detention on November 11, he tells 101 East, he had already had meetings with a Malaysian police intelligence officer who sits on the Malaysian High Commission and was told that this had assured the Australian foreign minister that he does not pose a threat to the Australian community.

He claims to be in regular contact with the intelligence officer and his former police colleagues. “I am still in touch with my group. I have a WhatsApp group with around 300 people. “My friends are all from the special forces,” he explains.

As debate rages in Malaysia over the possibility of his extradition and in Australia over the threat to the community following the release of a number of convicted criminals from prison, Sirul’s freedom remains fragile.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, the Australian Parliament quickly passed emergency legislation allowing authorities to use electronic ankle bracelets and curfews to monitor released prisoners.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan says that is not enough.

“I think He [Sirul] must return to Malaysia. That’s why I would ask the Malaysian government to abolish the death penalty so we can send him back.”

But that’s the last thing Sirul wants, claiming: “I feel in danger there because I realize it’s really unsafe for me to go back there… Whatever happens, I want a life with mine here in Australia Build up your child.”

Excuse me

And he had this to say to Shaariibuu’s family: “I will apologize to the family of the deceased. You know, Altantuya. Please forgive me.”

Shaariibuu’s two sons grew up without their mother. One of them, who was severely disabled, is now dead. Meanwhile, her father continues to fight for justice.

“Nothing can replace a mother’s love and care for her children – nothing. Altantuya’s life was taken away; she was executed. “One day the people who committed this crime will be punished,” Shaariibuu Setev, Altantuya’s father, told Al Jazeera in 2015.

In December 2022, a Malaysian civil court ordered the government, Abdul Razak Baginda and the two convicted police officers to pay $1 million in damages to Shaariibuu’s family, but the government and Baginda have appealed the decision. Shaariibuu’s family has also appealed for higher compensation after initially asking the court for more than $20 million.

101 East reached out to Sirul’s lawyer Hasnal Rezua Merican, businessman Abdul Salam bin Ahmad, as well as the Australian Foreign Minister and the Malaysian High Commission for comment on the former bodyguard’s claims, but received no response.

Najib is serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption and abuse of power and could not be reached for comment.