KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 ― The Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) has welcomed the prosecution of three police officers involved in the death of a man in police custody for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The body that oversees enforcement agencies, including the police, for misconduct complaints said that the trio were charged under Section 304(b) of the Penal Code at the Kota Tinggi Sessions Court in Johor Tuesday, over the death of welder Syed Mohd Azlan Syed Mohamed Nur in 2014. “For this charge, if found guilty, the three policemen can be jailed till 10 years, be slapped with a fine or both,” EAIC chairman Datuk Yaacob Md Sam said in a statement today. “In view of this, the EAIC also welcomes the police’s disciplinary unit to execute necessary action against the officers and police officers identified in the EAIC’s full report, who were found to have committed the wrongdoing as detailed under the said scope, under Section 24 of Act 700,” he added, referring to the EAIC Act 2009 on the scope of misconduct complaints that the commission may receive. Under Section 304(b) of the Penal Code, whoever commits culpable homicide not amounting to murder will be jailed for up to 10 years, or fined, or both, if the act was done “with the knowledge that it is likely to cause death, but without any intention to cause death, or to cause such bodily injury as is likely to cause death”. In its report last year, the EAIC said that the use of physical violence by police during arrest and questioning was the cause of Syed Mohd Azlan’s death, ruling the incident as murder. According to the enforcement watchdog, its investigations also found attempts to obscure evidence from the 25-year-old’s interrogation that resulted in 61 separate injuries on various parts of his body. The report said that the police officers involved also engaged in a “serious breach” of standard operating procedures concerning the handling of detainees, material seizure, and the integrity of statements. It added that the action was a criminal offence, specifically under Section 302 and 325 of the Penal Code read with Section 34 of the same Act. Section 302 pertains to murder while Section 325 involves voluntarily causing grievous bodily harm; Section 34 deals with voluntarily causing hurt. The EAIC then recommended that the Attorney-General’s Chambers prosecute the officers involved for the crimes identified in the agency’s investigations. It added that it was regrettable that custodial deaths continue to occur repeatedly in the country, saying that the matter should be viewed seriously. According to the EAIC’s investigations, Syed Mohd Azlan had been arrested on November 3, 2014 near Pengerang, Johor over possible involvement in an armed altercation involving two groups on September 14 the same year. He had been detained by a team of 13 police officers and held at the Sungai Rengit police station, where he had been interrogated over the attack. Syed Mohd Azlan was later transferred to the Kota Tinggi district police headquarters to be remanded, but died while in transit. A post-mortem determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to his chest, while 61 defensive wounds were discovered on his face, torso, and both legs.

Source: Malay Mail