Former Malaysian police officer Sirul Azhar Umar, who is now in Australian custody, has claimed he was ordered by “important people” to murder Altantuya Shaariibuu in 2006.

Altantuya was the lover of Abdul Razak Baginda — a former close associate of now deposed Malaysian premier Najib Razak — who was accused of arranging kickbacks for the purchase of French submarines in 2002.

Opponents of Najib’s government have long alleged that Sirul and accomplice Azilah Hadri, members of an elite unit that guards top Malaysian ministers, were scapegoats in the killing to hide the involvement of their masters at the highest levels of government.

Sirul has previously threatened to reveal who gave the order.

Reformist politician Anwar, who was released from prison Wednesday after his sodomy conviction was quashed by the king following Najib being toppled, suggested Sirul should be brought back to Malaysia for a fresh trial.

He told The Australian newspaper the original trial and the judges’ ruling was “compromised” and the reluctance of the judges to call relevant witnesses “made a mockery of the law”.

“The best way is to proffer a new charge and allow for a full hearing of the case,” he said.

Anwar is the presumptive successor to new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad following a stunning election upset last week, with his one-time nemesis turned ally vowing to step down in a year or two to make way for him.

‘Don’t say anything’

Sirul was reportedly detained in Australia in 2015 and has been held in custody since, although Canberra has never officially confirmed this.

A report in the Guardian last week said his bid for a protection visa would be heard within months. Authorities refused to confirm this to AFP or comment on other details of the case.

According to the newspaper, Canberra has allowed Malaysian officials and their middlemen to meet with him regularly, including one from Najib’s United Malays National Organisation party’s youth wing a fortnight ago.

It cited a source as saying the Malaysian visitor delivered a message to his countryman: “Don’t say anything”.

The scandal is one of Malaysia’s most sensitive topics, with suspicions swirling for years that Altantuya was murdered to keep her quiet about shenanigans in the submarine deal.

Najib has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing over the deal amid allegations that French submarine maker DCNS paid “commissions” of more than 114 million euros (US$142 million) for two Scorpene submarines, which Malaysian critics allege were kickbacks.

Altantuya, 28, was shot dead and her body blown up with military-grade plastic explosives outside Kuala Lumpur.

Sirul and Azilah were convicted in 2009 and sentenced to hang. They were later released when an appeals court overturned the conviction in 2013 after raising questions about how their trial was conducted.

But Malaysia’s highest court upheld their death sentences in 2015. Sirul fled the country ahead of that ruling.

Specialists and Rohingya volunteers are racing against time to find women in the giant camp who are thought to be hiding their pregnancies out of shame, as fears grow that newborns could be abandoned and new mothers may die without care in coming weeks.

Tosminara, herself a Rohingya refugee, has spent months coaxing these women out of the shadows, promising discretion.

“We tell them a password they can use when they arrive at the hospital or health post. The guard then sends the woman directly to the right spot,” said Tosminara, who goes by one name.

“They often are shy. Sometimes they are afraid to come forward.”

The Myanmar army crackdown last August drove roughly 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh and the number of pregnancies resulting from rape is not known.

But UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour said there would “inevitably” be a spike in births soon given the “frenzy of sexual violence in August and September last year”.

Marcella Kraay of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also said “a fair number of pregnancies” were expected.

An estimated 48,000 women will give birth in the camps this year. Those who were raped will be delivering imminently, mostly in secret and without medical care on the floors of bamboo shacks overlooking the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

Rohingya community leader Abdur Rahim said he knew two women personally who were raped by soldiers and due within the month. He had heard rumours of many others in a similar position, he added.

“The Myanmar military raped them. These babies are… evidence of their crimes,” he told AFP.

Traumatised and alone

Tosminara says she is trying her best to find these women in the heaving camps. But volunteers must contend with a deep-rooted stigma that keeps many from revealing their ordeal.

“Sometimes neighbours say ‘don’t do anything, it will humiliate you further’. So they don’t want to come,” said Nurjahan Mitu, a doctor who trains midwives through a UN Population Fund programme.

Many have sought clinical help to terminate pregnancies — legal in Bangladesh up to 12 weeks.

Others have resorted to underground options resulting in “complicated, incomplete abortions”, said MSF midwife Daniela Sofia.

The UN’s Gilmour, who toured the camps in March, said girls as young as 14 were self-inducing abortions.

Sofia, the midwife, assisted a 16-year-old with an abortion after the teenager arrived at her clinic in secret, terrified that her family would find out.

She said the girl was pregnant after being gang-raped by Myanmar soldiers, but had no one to support her through the trauma.

“Nobody knew about the rape. Her family were not aware of it,” Sofia told AFP.

More than half the Rohingya who have fled into Bangladesh are women and girls.

Children are seen everywhere but adolescent girls are largely invisible, many kept indoors by families concerned for their welfare, experts say.

Emu Roy, a Bangladeshi midwife, said a paucity of maternity professionals made it difficult to know how many women were suffering in silence in the camps.

“It’s not possible for us to go door-to-door,” she told AFP.

‘Tool of terror’

Experts are concerned that families could forcibly marry off teenage girls to cover up a pregnancy.

Others fear that newborns could be abandoned.

“Not only are you dealing with a woman who has been… traumatised, also there could be a child that is basically unwanted as well,” Kraay said.

MSF alone treated 311 rape victims — women and girls aged between nine and 50 — between August and March but Kraay said this was “the tip of the iceberg”.

The Myanmar army chief has denied allegations his forces used rape to terrorise the Muslim minority.

But the military last month was placed on a UN blacklist for armies and rebels known to use rape in war — joining Nigeria’s Boko Haram and the Islamic State group.

On top of the refugees’ accounts, UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten said rape was used as a “calculated tool of terror” to force the Rohingya out of Myanmar.

As the nine-month milestone looms, aid workers are ready to assign abandoned children to women who can breastfeed them, until families are found in the Rohingya community.

“We really want all children — regardless of the conditions or the locations where they are born — to grow up in a happy environment,” Save the Children’s Beatriz Ochoa told AFP.

The Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to forward her nomination to the entire Senate, virtually assuring that she will earn final approval to lead the US spy agency, replacing Mike Pompeo, who is now Secretary of State.

Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured during years spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, led a push to reject Haspel after she refused to describe the interrogation methods used after the 9/11 attacks as “immoral.”

But she reiterated her opposition to the practice in a letter sent earlier this week to the committee’s senior Democrat, Mark Warner, persuading him to endorse her.

“With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken,” she told Warner in the letter dated Monday.

Warner’s support was matched by one other unnamed Democrat in the secret vote, ensuring the closely divided Senate will also be able to pass Haspel through in a vote expected as early as this week.

It will make Haspel, a 61-year-old Russia specialist, the first-ever woman to lead the CIA, and the first director who spent an entire career in the agency’s clandestine services.

“Gina Haspel is the most qualified person the president could choose to lead the CIA and the most prepared nominee in the 70-year history of the agency,” committee chairman Richard Burr said in a statement.

Warner echoed that sentiment.

“I believe that she will be a strong advocate for the agency’s workforce, and an independent voice who can and will stand up on behalf of our nation’s intelligence community,” he said.

“Most importantly, I believe she is someone who can and will stand up to the president if ordered to do something illegal or immoral — like a return to torture.”

President Donald Trump, in a tweet, called Haspel “exceptionally qualified and the Senate should confirm her immediately. We need her to keep our great country safe!”

But Democrat Ron Wyden, one of the most strident opponents of the torture program, said he still has “grave concerns” about her suitability, rooted in still-classified matters that Haspel and the agency refused to make public.

The refusal to declassify the matters, Wyden said, has “only to do with protecting her own image.”

Out of the shadows

After a lifetime spent in the clandestine service, almost nothing was known about Haspel, even what she looked like, until a sketchy official biography and a few photographs were released in the last two months.

She joined the CIA in 1985, a few years after graduating from a Kentucky university where she studied languages and journalism.

Her first position was in Africa as a case officer, an assignment she says “was right out of a spy novel. It really didn’t get any better than that.”

Learning Russian and Turkish, in the 1990s she worked in Eastern Europe, and was CIA station chief in a country reported as Azerbaijan.

She joined the agency’s Counterterrorism Center on September 11, 2001, the day when Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four US airliners, leaving almost 3,000 dead.

It was that period, from 2001 to 2005, that has cast a shadow both on the CIA and Haspel’s resume.

Former CIA officials say Haspel oversaw a secret prison in Thailand run by the agency where Al-Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were water-boarded.

She has won praise from some for following orders; others criticize her for not refusing to do so. In her Senate confirmation hearing, she said agents were working under orders they understood were legal.

“We had been charged with making sure the country wasn’t attacked again,” she said.

Her nomination had strong support from inside the agency and across the intelligence community, where even strong opponents of Trump backed her.

“Gina Haspel is precisely the kind of truth teller you want in the room when important decisions are being made,” said former CIA director Michael Hayden.

Trump said the US government had not received any official word of a change in plans for the June 12 meeting in Singapore.

“We haven’t been notified at all. We’ll have to see,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

“We haven’t seen anything. We haven’t heard anything. We will see what happens. Whatever it is, it is.”

After weeks of warm words and diplomatic backslapping, Pyongyang abruptly threatened to pull out Tuesday, over US demands for “unilateral nuclear abandonment.”

In an angrily worded statement, the North warned “if the US is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue.”

The statement was attributed to first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan and carried by state media KCNA.

In that case, he added, Pyongyang would have to “reconsider” its participation at next month’s summit in Singapore.

The first vice foreign minister also tore into Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton for drawing parallels between North Korea and Libya, calling the comparison “absolutely absurd.”

“We do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him,” he said of Bolton.

Bolton has pushed the idea of a deal with North Korea like that reached with Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi, who agreed in 2003 to the elimination of his country’s nuclear program and chemical weapons arsenal to gain sanctions relief.

After giving up his atomic program, Kadhafi was killed in 2011 in an uprising backed by NATO bombing.

A plea from China

Experts have not been surprised by the sudden about face, expecting bumps in the road as tough issues to be discussed in the meeting come into sharper focus.

Washington is pressing for North Korea’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization. But so far, the North has given no public indication of what it is offering, beyond a broad commitment to denuclearization of the “Korean peninsula.”

Pyongyang “made clear on several occasions that precondition for denuclearization is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail of the United States,” the North Korean minister said.

In the past, Pyongyang has demanded the withdrawal of US troops stationed in the South, and an end to Washington’s nuclear umbrella over its ally.

China, North Korea’s sole major ally, called for the summit to go ahead.

“The situation on the peninsula has eased up, which is worth cherishing,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular briefing.

Minister Kim also dismissed offers by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for US economic aid if the North denuclearizes.

“We have never had any expectation of US support in carrying out our economic construction and will not at all make such a deal in future,” he said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian urged North Korea to “demonstrate its sincerity to negotiate on its denuclearization.”

During a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Le Drian said: “Highs and lows can come along as the recent news from the peninsula shows, but we must not lose sight of the goal.”

The White House said plans for the summit were moving ahead.

“The president is ready if the meeting takes place. And if it doesn’t, we will continue the maximum pressure campaign that has been ongoing,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

Tightrope diplomacy

The North Korean warning follows a weeks-long charm offensive that has seen Kim Jong Un hold a historic summit with the South’s president and meet twice with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Pyongyang also raised hopes ahead of the US summit by announcing it will destroy its nuclear testing site next week.

Analysts said Pyongyang appeared to be trying to redefine the terms of the debate.

“It’s a diplomatic tactic,” Kim Hyun-wook, professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, told AFP, calling it “brinkmanship to change the US position.”

“It looks like Kim Jong Un was pushed into accepting US demands for ‘denuclearization-first’ but is now trying to change its position after normalizing North Korea-China relations and securing economic assistance,” he added.

“The classic North Korean tightrope diplomacy between the US and China has begun.”

US officials have repeatedly claimed credit for Washington’s “maximum pressure” policy for bringing Pyongyang to the negotiating table.

Joshua Pollack of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies said Pyongyang had been irritated by the “triumphalist tone.”

“The North Koreans aren’t happy with what they’re seeing and hearing,” he said. “There is still a yawning gulf between expectations for diplomacy in Pyongyang and Washington, DC.”

Thunderstruck

KCNA also denounced the Max Thunder joint military exercises being held between the US and South Korea as a “rude and wicked provocation,” and Seoul said it had received a message cancelling planned high-level talks “indefinitely.”

The two-week drills started last Friday and involves some 100 aircraft from the two allies, including F-22 stealth fighter jets.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters it had received “no notification” of a position change by North Korea on next month’s meeting.

The exercises were “not provocative” and would continue, she added.

“Reported use of excessive force and live ammunition is inexcusable,” he said. “It is imperative we establish the facts of what is happening in Gaza.”

“Canada calls for an immediate independent investigation to thoroughly examine the facts on the ground — including any incitement, violence, and the excessive use of force.”

Monday’s violence coincided with the controversial inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem, which broke with decades of international tradition.

Israel justified the use of force against Palestinian protesters by citing the need to defend its borders, which the demonstrators were trying to overwhelm.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered near the border while smaller numbers approached the fence and sought to break through.

Trudeau offered Canadian assistance in the probe, while vowing to work with partners and multilateral institutions “to address this serious situation.”

The prime minister also said he is “appalled” that a Canadian doctor, Tarek Loubani, was among at least 2,400 unarmed protestors, media, first responders and children wounded.

“We are doing everything we can to assist Dr Loubani and his family, and to determine how a Canadian citizen came to be injured,” he said.

“We are engaging with Israeli officials to get to the bottom of these events.”

Canada has been a longstanding ally and supporter of Israel, but the Trudeau administration has been more critical of some of its policies regarding settlements and refugees than the previous Conservative government.

Now in opposition, the Conservatives said in February that they would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital if they win power in the next election in 2019.

EU president Donald Tusk urged leaders meeting in Bulgaria to form a “united European front” against Trump’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal and his move to impose trade tariffs on Europe.

Tusk even compared the US administration to Europe’s traditional foes Moscow and Beijing as he launched his broadside before a dinner of the 28 leaders in Sofia where they discussed the issue.

“Looking at the latest decisions of President Trump, someone could even think with friends like that, who needs enemies,” Tusk told reporters.

“But frankly speaking, Europe should be grateful to President Trump, because thanks to him we have got rid of all illusions. He has made us realise that if you need a helping hand you will find one at the end of your arm.”

The transatlantic rift has hijacked the agenda of a summit on Thursday at which the EU leaders will meet their Balkan counterparts in a bid to foster closer ties and keep Russia out of their backyard.

European ministers met a top Iranian official in Brussels on Tuesday in a bid to save the Iranian nuclear accord after Trump decided to pull out. Meanwhile the EU is still trying to win exemptions from tariffs on steel and aluminium exports.

Tusk called for more unity in the divided EU — which is set to lose Britain as a member next year — to face the growing challenges.

‘Capricious assertiveness’

“Besides the traditional political challenges such as the rise of China or the aggressive stance of Russia, we are witnessing today a new phenomenon: the capricious assertiveness of the American administration,” Tusk said.

“I have no doubt that in the new global game, Europe will either be one of the major players, or a pawn. This is the only real alternative.”

After the talks, a European source told AFP the leaders agreed on a “united EU approach” on the Iran deal, including continued support for the agreement if Tehran abides by it.

They also agreed to “initiate work to protect European companies negatively affected by the US decision,” which involves Washington reimposing sanctions on the Iranian nuclear programme.

“The EU will continue fighting for a rules-based international system despite recent decisions on climate change, tariffs and Iran,” the source said after the leaders met over dinner in Sofia.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron — whose countries are the signatories to the Iran deal along with the US, Russia and China, gave their views on the situation to their colleagues, he said.

Merkel however said earlier that Europe had no choice but to stick with the ties that have bound it to Washington since World War II.

“Despite all the difficulties we have these days, the transatlantic relations are and will remain of outstanding importance,” Merkel told the German parliament.

‘Gun at its head’

On Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, a move the EU has warned could spark a trade war, the leaders also presented a united front.

They backed plans to offer concessions if the US gives Europe a permanent exemption from the tariffs, but added that the “EU will not negotiate with a gun at its head”.

Tusk said earlier that it was “absurd to even think that the EU could be a threat to the US” in terms of trade.

Behind their message of unity and firmness, some member states seem open to tolerating limited quotas from the United States on metals imports while others want a harder line, diplomats said.

The EU leaders were also due to discuss the deaths of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza after Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, in another move that the Europeans had strongly opposed, but there were no details on that discussion.

The EU has called for “utmost restraint” after Israeli forces killed 60 Palestinians during clashes and protests along the Gaza border against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, in the conflict’s bloodiest day in years.

But there are divisions over the embassy move within the EU itself, with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania having recently blocked an EU statement slamming the US decision.

Wednesday’s dinner will be followed by a summit on Thursday where EU leaders will meet their counterparts from the Balkan nations of Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia.

Although the world has seen old elected leaders agism has always been a rallying point for politicians. During the campaign for US election there were lot of references to Trump’s age making him unfit to hold the highest position.

While the opposition did refer to age as a factor in making him unsuitable for the position, Malaysians elected the oldest leader in history to head the country. Mutahir Muhammad aged 92 is 21 years older than US President Donald Trump and twice the age of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Experience in politics seems to be a key deciding factor for Asians to elect leaders thus most of the leaders are on the higher side of age. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte 73 years of age is the most controversial president of the country. He has been attracting lot of criticism owing to his undiplomatic remarks and his war on drugs. Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith is 72 years of age. He has been in power since 2016 and has held significant political positions before being the prime minister of Laos.

Sheikh Hasina, 70 is the prime minister of Bangladesh. Her father led the liberation war of Bangladesh and continuing his legacy she has stood firmly against two military regimes. She is one of the 100 influential people on the list of Time magazine. While she has received lot of recognition for accepting Rohingya refugees, she has also faced criticism within her country for mauling dissent.

Ranil Wickremesinghe was the youngest cabinet minister in Sri Lanka. At age 69 he is the tenth prime minister of the country.

Indian Prime Minister Narender Modi (67) is the star attraction. He is considered as one of the most famous political leaders that the country has seen. Although the minority rights violation has increased under his rule, his popularity seems anything but diminishing.

At 66 the leaders of South Korea, Myanmar, Nepal and Singapore are the same age.

Cambodian PM (65) Hun Sen has been in power since 1985 and is one of the longest serving Prime minister in the world. While he has been responsible for pulling the country out of the devastation caused by Khmer Rouge, he is also seen as a very authoritarian leader with a poor human rights record.

Xi Jingping (64), the leader of the ruling Chinese Communist Party has been one of the most influential leaders of the country with his name mentioned in the constitution, an honour reserved for  after Mao Zedong until now.

Hailing from a political family Shinzo Abe (63) is on the fourth term of being Japan’s highest leader. Under his leadership and economic policies known as “Abenomics” Japan managed to pump billions of dollars into its economic growth. The controversial Thai army chief Prayut Cha Chan (64) became the prime minister after the dramatic coup after which the country did not see elections.

While Brunei Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah (51) is youngest in age, Bhutan PM Tshering Tobgay (52) is the youngest elected leader in the region. The Harvard educated leader is the second elected prime minister of the country.

Joint-venture investments by controversial 1MDB with companies abroad began in 2009 with the intention of exploring investment opportunities overseas.

The first joint venture was signed between 1MDB, PetroSaudi Holdings (Cayman) Ltd and 1MDB PetroSaudi Ltd on September 28, 2009.

1MDB holds a 40 per cent equity interest with an investment contribution of US$1bil in cash while PetroSaudi Holdings (Cayman) Ltd holds 60 per cent equity stake in the form of assets worth at least US$1.5 billion.

In the report, it was noted that there were four different companies registered under the name of PetroSaudi but the proposed investment paper submitted to the Board of Directors of 1MDB did not include such information.

The asset valuation report prepared by Edward L. Morse was submitted on Sept 29, 2009, which was the same date of confirmation of his appointment by 1MDB Chief Executive Officer, and received one day after the JV agreement was signed.

The assessment report takes into account assets on oil exploration and production rights in Turkmenistan and Argentina.”

An assessment was implemented on PetroSaudi International Ltd’s assets despite the JV agreement clearly stating that the company owning all the rights and interests of the agreed assets for the joint venture project is PetroSaudi International Cayman, the report said.

Besides that, the JV agreement contained clauses that lacked in guarding the interests of the company.

Among them was an advance received by 1MDB PetroSaudi Ltd amounting to US$700 million from its parent company, PetroSaudi Holdings (Cayman) Ltd on Sept 25, 2009, to be fully repayable on or before Sept 30, 2009.

As of September 30, 2009, a total of US$1 billion (3.487 billion ringgit) was transferred by 1MDB into two separate accounts, with US$300 million into the joint venture account and US$700 million into another company’s account with the aim of repaying the advance taken by the joint venture company.

Board approval of 1MDB was also not obtained before making the US$700 million payment into the account of the other company, the report stated.