KUALA LUMPUR: Sultanah of Terengganu, Sultanah Nur Zahirah has filed an appeal against the dismissal of her RM100 million defamation suit against Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown.
Counsel Datuk Mohd Haziq Pillay confirmed this in a statement today.
"We have filed an appeal to the Court of Appeal against the decision of High Court judicial commissioner Dr John Lee Kien How @ Mohd Johan Lee," he said.
On Oct 31, Johan ruled that there were no defamatory statements in the defendant's (Rewcastle-Brown) book "The Sarawak Report – The Inside Story of the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) Expose".
He said there were no negative implications from the two imputations in the case despite the defendant's factual error, in which she acknowledged accidentally referring to the plaintiff when the sultan's sister was intended.
He said no defamatory imputation from the statements, although there was obviously a matter of mistaken identity.
The court also awarded RM80,000 in costs to the defendants.
Apart from Rewcastle-Brown, the sultanah also named book publisher Gerakbudaya Enterprise and printer Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd as the other defendants.
Sultanah Nur Zahirah claimed RM100 million in damages from each of the defendants and wanted the second defendant, the publisher, to withdraw the books containing the defamatory statements as well as to stop the third defendant, the printing company, from printing more copies of the book.
In their statement of defence, the three defendants denied that they had accused Sultanah Nur Zahirah of being involved in corrupt practices.
Rewcastle-Brown contended that Sarawak Report did not suggest that the sultanah was involved in a conspiracy that involved Low or that she was involved in the government administration associated with 1MDB matters.