In a statement, chief secretary to the government Zuki Ali said the king had consented to Hishamudin’s appointment for a three-year term.

Hishamudin, who served as a Suhakam commissioner from 2019 to 2022, was also a member of the Judicial Appointments Commission and chairman of the Malaysia Competition Commission.

He led the Suhakam panel which launched an inquiry into the disappearance of Pastor Joshua Hilmy and his wife, Ruth Sitepu, unanimously deciding that the couple were victims of enforced disappearance.

Nonetheless, the three-member panel, which included then Suhakam commissioners Jerald Joseph and Madeline Berma, did not find any evidence that Joshua and Ruth were abducted by “agents of the state”.

The Suhakam chairman’s post had been vacant since Rahmat Mohamad resigned on Aug 31 last year, two months after the commission sanctioned an independent probe into allegations of abuse of power against him.

A lawyer by training, Hishamudin started his career in the civil service as a magistrate in Kuala Lumpur in 1973, before being promoted to president of the sessions court, state legal adviser for Selangor, and chief registrar of the then Supreme Court.

In 1992, he was appointed a judicial commissioner before being elevated to the High Court two years later, and to the Court of Appeal in 2009. He retired from civil service in 2015.