Lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah said the trial court should consider even the slightest defence by his client, even if it was an afterthought.

“It does not matter what kind of defence the accused is raising, This court should consider all available defence to ensure he gets a fair trial,” the lawyer said in his submission.

Najib has made an application for the court to allow Australian handwriting expert, Dr Steven Strach, to examine the original or higher quality copies of the documents tendered in court.

Shafee said in the English legal system which Malaysia adopted, the court would not deny an accused person any evidence to create a doubt in the prosecution’s case.

“The accused must be given the latitude to raise all defence available to him.

“It is better for the court to acquit 10 accused who is guilty than to convict one who is innocent even if the defence is an afterthought,” Shafee added.

However,the prosecution has stated that the defence team’s attempt to call the handwriting expert was an afterthought to show that Najib’s signature in the bank and company documents were forged.

Ad-hoc prosecutor V Sithambaram yesterday said the move was also to change the defence which lawyers for the accused did not raise during the prosecution stage.

There are six disputed documents which are related to the SRC shareholders’ minutes and one on the instruction to transfer money to Ambank where Najib had private accounts.

The defence said the documents might have been forged and this was only discovered during the trial but the prosecution claimed that Najib’s legal team had suspected that the documents were falsified and was communicating with a foreign expert about them.

Shafee today said Najib’s application was genuine because the defence, during the prosecution stage, had also shown documents signed by other witnesses like SRC director Suboh Md Yassin and SRC CEO Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil whose signatures could also have been forged.

The lawyer also said that should Najib’s application be allowed, the prosecution could recall its witnesses as provided under Section 425 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

He said the prosecution was vehemently opposing the application as it was worried that the court would reject several documents that were admitted at the close of the prosecution’s case.

In reply to Shafee, Sithambaram said: “There is no need to call the expert as we have shown through our witnesses that the signature on the documents were that of the accused,” he said.

Sithambaram said as such, there was no need for the court to call an expert just to confirm if it was Najib’s signature on the seven documents disputed by the defence.

“He has also admitted during the investigation that the signature was his. Only now he is changing his stand,” Sithambaram said.

Najib, who is also Pekan MP, is accused of abusing his power as prime minister by giving government guarantees on SRC International’s RM4 billion loan from Retirement Fund Inc.

He is also charged with three counts of money laundering and three counts of criminal breach of trust in the transfer of RM42 million to his accounts from the former 1MDB unit.

Judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali will deliver his ruling tomorrow.