*StarDust*

Cleared of drug trafficking after 16 years
By Khushwant Singh

SIXTEEN years ago, Yunani Abdul Hamid was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal for drug trafficking.

Last November, the 33-year-old was jailed for nine years and ordered to be caned six times for the offence. On Tuesday, he was acquitted of the charge.

His was an unprecedented case that spanned 16 years.

In 1992, Yunani was giving a lift on his motorcycle to Abdul Aziz Idros after work. Both men were lashers at the then Port of Singapore Authority container area.

They fled after a guard stopped the duo at the gate, and found nearly a kg of cannabis in a backpack carried by Abdul Aziz.

While his colleague went into hiding, Yunani turned himself in, claiming at the time that the drugs were not his.

When Abdul Aziz, 40, was eventually caught in April last year, he pleaded guilty to drug traficking and was sentenced to 12 years? jail and eight strokes of the cane. He also implicated Yunani and the 33-year-old also pleaded guilty last November.

He appealed against the sentence.

As Judge of Appeal V.K. Rajah had 'serious doubts' about Yunani's guilt because of the long lapse in prosecution, the High Court judge quashed Yunani's conviction last month and ordered a re-trial.

During the seven-day trial before District Judge Jasvender Kaur, Abdul Aziz denied his guilt.

Cross-examined by Yunani's lawyer, Mr Abraham Vergis, Abdul Aziz claimed that he had pleaded guilty because he lacked money to fight the case and also because the prosecution had reduced the charge from a capital offence to one which carried a maximum jail term of 20 years with 15 strokes of the cane.

He also said his lawyer told him that he would receive a lenient sentence if he was to testify against Yunani.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Lim Tse Haw then asked the judge to impeach Abdul Aziz's testimony.

Criticising prosecutors for placing too much emphasis on police statements, DJ Kaur said that CNB investigation officer John Cheong had not taken any steps to verify what Yunani said in his statement.

Calling it 'very unsatisfactory', she noted that IO Cheong did carry out indepenent checks to verify Yunani's version.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2...ry_229959.html

*StarDust*

Freed twice for a 16-year-old crime
Sentenced to jail and caning for drug charges, he is cleared after witness recants
By Khushwant Singh


RELIEF AT LAST: Mr Yunani surrounded by his family after his release. From left: His fiancee Ms Rohani Tompang, his brother-in-law Mr Asmadi Rahijan, his sister Ms S. Lilis Hamid, his nephew Mr Elyas Asmadi and his mother Madam Jamilah Sidek. -- ST PHOTO: EDWIN KOO

THE last 16 years have been something of a yo-yo for Mr Yunani Abdul Hamid. Now 33, he has been set free by the courts twice for the same crime.

But his acquittal yesterday made him a free man for real. Back in 1992, he was told by the courts that he was free to go, but that he would be nabbed if fresh evidence against him surfaced.

He lived with that hanging over his head until last November, when he was convicted and sentenced to nine years in jail and ordered to be caned six times for drug trafficking.

His case, spanning an unprecedented 16 years, is a story of flip-flopping court testimonies on the part of Abdul Aziz Idros, a former co-worker who was caught carrying a kilogram of cannabis while in Mr Yunani's company.

In 1992, Mr Yunani was giving a lift on his motorcycle to Abdul Aziz at the end of a day's work in the port's container area.

A guard who stopped them at the port gate found the drugs in a backpack Abdul Aziz carried, but the pair sped off on Mr Yunani's bike.

While Abdul Aziz went into hiding, Mr Yunani turned himself in and claimed that the drugs were not his. With Abdul Aziz missing and no evidence found, Mr Yunani was given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal.

When Abdul Aziz, 40, was eventually caught last April, he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and earned himself 12 years in jail and eight strokes of the cane.

He implicated Mr Yunani, who pleaded guilty last November, but appealed against the nine years and six strokes he was dealt.

As Judge of Appeal V.K. Rajah had 'serious doubts' about Mr Yunani's guilt because of the long lapse in prosecution, the High Court judge quashed Mr Yunani's conviction last month and ordered a re-trial.

During the seven-day trial before District Judge Jasvender Kaur, Abdul Aziz denied his guilt.

Cross-examined by Mr Yunani's lawyer Abraham Vergis, Abdul Aziz claimed that he had pleaded guilty because he lacked the money to fight the case and because the prosecution had reduced the charge from a capital offence to one which carried a maximum jail term of 20 years with 15 strokes of the cane.

He added that his lawyer had told him that he would get off with a lenient sentence if he testified against Mr Yunani.

He did not have to do so, since Mr Yunani had pleaded guilty as his charge had also been reduced.

But when it was time to implicate Mr Yunani at the re-trial, Abdul Aziz did not keep to the script. He testified that neither he nor Mr Yunani had known about the cannabis in the bag and that Mr Yunani was not the sort to deal in drugs.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Lim Tse Haw then asked the judge to impeach Abdul Aziz's testimony, allowing the prosecution to ask the court to reject his court testimony in favour of his statements to the Central Narcotics Bureau, which implicated Mr Yunani.

District Judge Kaur criticised prosecutors for giving too much emphasis to police statements. She also criticised CNB investigation officer John Cheong for not having independently verified what Mr Yunani had said in his statement and for not determining the ownership of the bag containing the drugs.

The judge also had words for Abdul Aziz, for inconsistencies in his police statements and the turnabout on the witness stand.

Upon acquittal, Mr Yunani, a father of two boys, aged six and 10, clasped his hands together.

He told The Straits Times in an interview at his sister's Bukit Batok flat last night: 'After a year behind bars, I desperately want to see my two sons and taste my mother's cooking.'

He said the family was close, so the worst thing about being in jail was being separated from them and for something he did not do at that.

'As my lawyer said, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,' he said.

He said he had pleaded guilty because the prosecution would not have reduced the charge if he had not. And if he had fought the case and lost, he would have been jailed 20 years or more.

His mother, Madam Jamilah Sidek, 57, a housewife, said that she wanted to thank her neighbours and friends for praying for Mr Yunani.

She said: 'My boy is coming home.'

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Sto...ry_230095.html

Voodoo Vince

Alamak, jailed and caned for nothing.

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People don't plan to fail... They fail to plan.

Huaikong

his life damned sway...

T-Rex

Got compensation?

stinky_shawn

read carefully leh.... he sit 1 year only lah...

platform

at least he cleared his name

stevewonder

Lower court judges always have a strange bias against all suspects and err on the safe side against them. Only the high court judges have the eye to look at the case in details for any doubts in the statement recorded by the investigating officers. That's why very few lawyers want to fight in criminal cases and tell the client to plea guilty instead. Many pple in jail have no money to fight in courts and thus plea guilty at the very start. So, at the end, many lawyers give up their profession and migrated else where due to this injustice. That's why the number of lawyers is the same as 10 years ago even when we have new batches of lawyers coming out from law school. I hope our new Law Minister review the entire legal system and made the system truly fair and equitable for all Singaporeans.

stevewonder

Wrongful conviction is common in the district ourt.
Take the case of the NEA senior manager convicted on bomb hoax. The officer in charge of the case is not competent in investigating the case such as alleged deletion of photos of the crime scene, no knowledge of computer related investigation technique before the case, failure to check on who are authorised to enters the rooms prior to that question raised in court, lying that he has obtained SGEMS logs to see whether work related emails were sent from the accused computer. The IO only have layman knowledge on IT forensic investigation and the evidence produced is highly flawed as all the SOP of a proper criminal investigation were not followed. With all these doubts, the district court judge convicted the NEA manager where every parts of the investigation are higly questionable.



Investigator's flip-flops and missing photos
By Loh Chee Kong, TODAY | Posted: 29 September 2006 0935 hrs


Rather than the accused, it was investigating officer Andy Ong who spent an uncomfortable day on the stand yesterday, as District Judge Bala Reddy chided him for giving contradictory statements while defence lawyer Raymond Lye questioned his competency in handling computer-related crimes.

Mr Ong, a sergeant at the Criminal Investigation Department, had probed the case against former civil servant Neo Khoon Sing, who had allegedly posted hoax email messages on Oct 18 and 19 last year at three government feedback websites, warning of a suicide bomber plot against the country's political leaders.

The 36-year-old senior manager with the National Environment Agency (NEA) was suspended over the charges, after the police raided his office and arrested him on Oct 21 last year.

The police recovered one of the messages on the computer and a thumb drive assigned to Neo at his workplace. Data showed the computer had been used to visit the government websites.

Denying all charges, Neo claimed he had been framed, as he always left his office door unlocked and that he had written down his user ID and password on paper.

Under cross-examination, Mr Ong conceded he had gone against standard police operating procedure when he deleted pictures he had taken of Neo's desk during the raid. Mr Lye said there was now no way Neo could prove that his user ID and password were on his desk.

When Mr Ong apologised for his mistake, Mr Lye said sarcastically, "You should apologise to the accused instead."

Mr Ong initially told the court Neo always locked his office door when he wasn't around, based on information from Neo's subordinates but later backtracked on his statement — after Mr Lye pointed out that a clerk would enter Neo's office at various times of the day to deliver letters.

The prosecution also said work-related email were sent from Neo's account minutes after the hoax messages were posted.

When asked by Mr Lye whether there was evidence to show the email had been sent from Neo's assigned computer, Mr Ong flip-flopped for an hour before saying no — but not before Judge Reddy raised his voice to tell him to "listen to the question carefully". The judge then stood down the session for 40 minutes so Mr Ong could confirm his answer.

When the trial reconvened, Mr Ong said he had asked the civil service email system administrators in November for records to trace the computer that the email originated from, but was told no records were available, as the data had been overwritten.

Only after six months had passed did Mr Ong ask NEA's IT Department for similar records, but here, too, he drew a blank. Quizzed by Mr Lye on the delay, Mr Ong said he "did not feel this information was crucial" because Neo could have committed the offence on any other computer.

Mr Lye countered that Mr Ong had already "made up" his mind that Neo was the culprit, as he had not established whether it was possible for two users to log on to Neo's account at the same time. Mr Ong replied that it was "irrelevant" whether that was possible as the feedback was "web-based and not application-based".

Mr Ong admitted that at the time of the investigations, he was not trained in handling computer-related crimes. It was only in June this year that he attended an intermediate course on computer forensics.

Mr Ong agreed with Mr Lye's suggestion that his IT knowledge was "the same as a layman" at the time. However, the police officer disagreed with Mr Lye's charge that he had not been properly trained to handle Neo's case. The prosecution stressed Mr Ong's role was to "piece together the evidence" from the files recovered by computer forensic experts on Neo's computer. - TODAY/fa

inle

if i remembered correctly from my criminal law studies s tat
the basis of SG law s: guilty unless proven innocence...

unlike US: innocence unless proved guilty....

tats wat happened here in SG....
n we haf to follow tis standard of legal system....

*StarDust*

Then he suffered for nothing.

Miss QQ

Poor man...

Life is full of unexpected surprises