Bukit Gelugor MP Ramkarpal Singh said it was unfair to keep these condemned prisoners waiting as they languish on Death Row, after having exhausted their legal appeals.
“It is inhumane to hold them indefinitely, as they have a right to seek a pardon and to bring a certainty to their life,” he told FMT.
Ramkarpal, a lawyer who specialises in criminal cases, said such a situation also physically and mentally affected family members of prisoners.
“I hope the Pardons Board in every state will have a timeframe in deciding whether to approve petitions for clemency,” he said.
Currently there is no time limit for the board to dispose of such petitions.
The Attorney-General advises the head of state in the decison making process.
He said this in response to the case of former aircraft cabin cleaner, Ahmad Najib Aris who was hanged on Sept 23 for the murder of IT analyst Canny Ong Lay Kian in 2003 at Old Klang Road, Petaling Jaya.
The trial, gripped national headlines as gory details of the abduction, rape, murder and the dumping of Ong’s body into a manhole before it was torched, emerged.
A DNA test confirmed Ahmad Najib’s semen in Ong’s vagina which proved that he had intercourse with the deceased.
In 2005, the Shah Alam High Court found him guilty for murder and rape of Ong, then 28.
The trial court also sentenced him to 20 years jail and 10 strokes of the rotan for the sexual crime.
In 2008, the Federal Court upheld the sentence and conviction.
The following year, Ahmad Najib failed to obtain the Federal Court’s permission to review his conviction and death sentence against him, saying that there was no miscarriage of justice.
Meanwhile , lawyer Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla, who represented Ahmad Najib in court proceedings, said he was made to understand that prison officials assisted the prisoner to file a petition for clemency to the Selangor Ruler.
” He had got in touch with my instructing solicitors who provided documents to file the petition,” he said.
Haniff believed that the sentence was put on hold as the government imposed an unofficial moratorium pending a decision whether to abolish the death penalty for drug traffickers.
“I was informed that the suspension of sentence was then also extended to others facing the capital punishment,” he added.
The Home Ministry in March said Malaysia has executed 12 out of a total 829 people who were sentenced to death since 2010.
In a written parliamentary reply to Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo, the ministry added that 95 others have received either a royal pardon or had their death sentences commuted.
The sentences were handed out due to the offences of murder, drug trafficking, smuggling of firearms, and also kidnapping, the ministry said.