[UPDATED] Court tosses T’ganu sultanah’s libel suit against Rewcastle-Brown

KUALA LUMPUR – The high court here has dismissed the defamation suit filed by Terengganu Sultanah Nur Zahirah against Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown and two others.

The sultanah has also been ordered to pay a total of RM80,000 to all the defendants.

High court judicial commissioner John Lee Kien How @ Mohd Johan said he did not find any defamatory statement in Rewcastle-Brown’s book The Sarawak Report – The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose that had damaged Sultanah Nur Zahirah’s reputation.

“Despite the factual error there, to say that the plaintiff consented or agreed to the establishment of the sovereign wealth fund, will, to my mind, not in any way degrade the plaintiff’s (Sultanah Nur Zahirah) reputation. 

“Likewise, mere support for someone for a job would not in any way discredit a person bearing in mind such support or letters of support is very much a (part of) Malaysian culture.”

“Moreover, the statement also highlights that such a statement (about the support of the sultanah in his obtaining of the position) was claimed by Jho Low himself. There is nothing to suggest the truth in it,” he said in his judgment.

“To sum up, I see no defamatory imputation from the statements although there was obviously a matter of mistaken identity. Thus, the plaintiff’s case is hereby dismissed.”

Sultanah Nur Zahirah had sued Rewcastle-Brown, along with publisher Gerakbudaya Enterprise’s founder Chong Ton Sin and printer Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd, for alleging that she was involved in the formation of the Terengganu Investment Authority and had leveraged her position to interfere with the wealth fund’s day-to-day operation, among others.

In her testimony to the court last August, Rewcastle-Brown admitted that it was an honest mistake on her part to write the said passage in regard to the Terengganu royal.

On December 13, 2019, high court judge Datuk Ahmad Zaidi Ibrahim held that the defendants had indeed defamed the sultanah, asserting that a passage in the book had cast aspersions on the plaintiff.

In her defence, Sultanah Nur Zahirah – represented by A.K. Vishnu Kumar and Datuk Mohd Haziq Pillay – argued that the content of the book would infer that she had interfered in the state administration and used her influence to establish a sovereign wealth fund, which later became 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

However, counsel for the defendants cited the defences of fair comment and qualified privilege.

The sultanah sought RM100 million in damages from each defendant. – The Vibes, October 31, 2022