In a letter made exclusively available to FMT, Smit’s family lawyer Sébas Diekstra hoped that Mahathir would personally look into the investigation since there were unanswered questions surrounding her death.
Diekstra claimed that the Smits have yet to receive the first report of a post-mortem examination of Ivana’s body. Repeated requests for case files by the Dutch authorities had also been ignored, he said.
Ivana’s naked body was found on Dec 7 last year on the balcony of a sixth-floor apartment in a building on Persiaran Capsquare, off Jalan Dang Wangi, Kuala Lumpur.
The 19-year-old was said to have earlier been in the apartment of a couple, an American man and his Kazakh wife, on the 20th floor. Police assumed she had fallen down.
Her family lawyer said Malaysian police had given only a skimpy briefing to the Dutch authorities but not the exact findings.
In the letter to Dr Mahathir, he said:
“Dutch authorities have repeatedly requested documents from the investigation, but they still have not been provided.
“With this, I, therefore, turn to you (Dr Mahathir) personally … their main wish is to gain access to the complete case file, so they can convince themselves that there is nothing more to investigate.
“This is so the relatives no longer have to live with unbearable uncertainty and know that every stone is turned.”
Diekstra also asked Dr Mahathir to look into why the American couple who had hosted Ivana at their apartment had mysteriously not faced criminal charges for drug possession.
Early last month the American couple broke their silence and said they had done nothing wrong. They told UK’s Daily Mail that Ivana had likely fallen off their balcony on her own.
It was reported last year that Ivana had been out drinking with the couple in Bangsar before returning with them to their apartment.
Police have classified the case as sudden death pending the results of the post-mortem and pathology tests. The results have not been revealed.
Ivana’s body was kept at a hospital morgue in Kuala Lumpur for 21 days before being repatriated to the Netherlands, and she was cremated in her birth town of Roermond on Dec 30 in a grand send-off which received wide coverage in the media.
A pathologist who conducted a second post-mortem into her body said he found bruises on her arms which he said might have been inflicted before her fall.
Dr Frank van der Goot said that a struggle had probably taken place before she plunged to her death.
Dutch media have also quoted the pathologist as saying that the drug para-Methoxymethamphetamine (pMMA) had been taken just before her death, and was probably consumed in her apartment.
Model Ivana Smit’s death definitely a murder case, says British PI