KUALA LUMPUR: While the crime index may have dropped in 2017, it was not a quiet year for law enforcement officers, who were kept busy day and night.
Malaysia made headlines worldwide when Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was allegedly assassinated by two women, who wiped his face with the deadly VX nerve agent at klia2 in February.
The women were arrested, but claimed they were duped into thinking that it was a prank for a TV show.
North Korean chemical expert Ri Jong-chol was also arrested, but he was eventually deported as there was insufficient evidence against him.
The case also saw the Malaysian government declaring North Korean ambassador Kang Chol persona non grata.
Kang left the country on March 6, causing Pyongyang to bar all Malaysians from leaving North Korea.
The stranded Malaysians were released after the government agreed to hand over Jong-nam’s body to North Korea and grant safe passage to the North Korean men wanted in connection with the case.
The once cozy ties between Malaysia and North Korea frayed following the case.
Earlier this month, an article by the New Straits Times Special Probes Team highlighted new leads in the mass killing in Wang Kelian in 2015, which suggested the possibility of a cover-up.
New information uncovered by the NST showed that police had allegedly discovered the camps in January 2015, but only announced the discovery on May 25, 2015.
Malaysian authorities said they discovered 139 graves and two dozen camps on May 24, 2015.
The federal police subsequently responded to questions posed by NST, including why the discovery of the camps in Bukit Wang Burma on Jan 19 and Bukit Genting Perah on March 13 was kept secret.
Police, however, said that nothing had been kept secret and four reports were made about the raids at the locations, but they were not revealed due to security and operational reasons at the time.
It said the camp was destroyed as a preventive measure to avoid other migrants from entering or re-entering the area and to use it as their base.
Deputy Inspector-General of police Tan Sri Noor Rashid Ibrahim said investigations were ongoing and the police were in the process of prosecuting several suspects involved in the case.
The report caught the attention of Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who ordered investigations into the tragedy to be revisited to determine if Malaysian enforcement officers were in cahoots with human trafficking syndicates, or had tried to cover up the case.
Another major highlight was the police’s success in thwarting the Islamic State’s planned attacks against several targets in the Klang Valley, including the Better Beer Festival and non-Muslim places of worship.
Three people — a 19-year-old Form Six student, a former soldier and a contractor — were nabbed by counterterrorism operatives in Kelantan on Oct 10.
The teenager was believed to have been experimenting with improvised explosive devices by testing two bombs in an open space. One bomb exploded and the other malfunctioned.
On April 29, Malaysia’s most wanted militant, Muhammad Wanndy Mohamed Jedi, was confirmed to have been killed in a drone attack in Syria.
This was followed by the deaths of Malaysian militants Dr Mahmud Ahmad and Amin Baco, who were fighting in Marawi City, the Philippines.
Berita Harian, NST’s sister newspaper, recently revealed that the ownership of a plot of Felda land worth RM270 million in Jalan Semarak was transferred to a private company in 2015 via a dubious deal.
The deal was discovered after Felda chairman Tan Sri Shahrir Abdul Samad took over from his predecessor Tan Sri Isa Samad.
This year saw its fair share of deadly fire incidents.
The most deadly one involved 21 tahfiz students and two wardens, who were killed in a fire at their dormitory in Keramat in September.
Police detained seven people, aged between 11 and 18, who were believed to have carried out the arson. Six out of the seven detained had tested positive for marijuana.
The act of revenge was believed to have been triggered by a name-calling incident between a few of the tahfiz students and the suspects.
In another case, a hearing-impaired man was arrested for allegedly murdering two senior citizens, a 9-year-old boy and a toddler before setting their house on fire. Police believed that the incident was related to a financial dispute.
Bullying cases also made headlines this year. In June, a teenager, T. Nhaveen, was dragged to a field by a group of teenagers, who assaulted him and inserted a blunt object into his anus, reportedly because of his “soft” personality.
Nhaveen died five days after being admitted to hospital.
On June 1, Malaysia National Defence University naval cadet Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain succumbed to severe injuries, including burns on his body, after a hot steam iron was pressed onto his chest, hands and feet.
Six university students were accused of murder and abetment in the case.
A string of rape and incest cases also took place this year, with the most high profile one involving a 36-year-old man who raped, sodomised and sexually abused his teenage daughter over 600 times since 2015.
He was sentenced to 48 years in jail and 24 strokes of the rotan.
The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry announced that Sarawak recorded an alarming 3,272 incest cases from 2006 to 2015, involving victims aged between 13 and 15.
In one case in Kota Samarahan, a 57-year-old farmer and his three sons were sentenced to 335 years’ imprisonment by the Sessions Court in August for committing incest against the former’s two granddaughters.
All of the accused, including the victims’ 42-year-old father and two uncles, were sentenced to 24 strokes of the rotan each for having an incestuous relationship with the two victims at a house in Tebedu, Serian, since January 2013.
Another high-profile story was the abduction of Pastor Raymond Koh by a group of masked men in what appeared to be a well-executed plan on Feb 13.
Police have been unable to determine whether Koh is alive or dead. To date, he has yet to be found.
Following his disappearance, three other social activists were also said to be missing — Amri Che Mat, Pastor Joshua Hilmi and his wife, Ruth Hilmi.
In March, seven children drowned when they slipped and fell into a raging river.
At the time of the incident, the kids were fishing next to a bridge at a river in Bukit Beruntung, Selangor.
A total of 52 teenagers, aged between 15 and 18, were charged at the Klang magistrate’s court with participating in unlawful assemblies in front of four schools in the district on April 20 and 21.
They were arrested after two viral videos showed the teenagers, suspected to be involved in gangs, creating a ruckus and cutting a cake bearing the digits “24”.
The accused — 42 school students, nine school dropouts and a college student — were charged in front of magistrate Nor Asma Ahmad under Section 143 of the Penal Code.
Among the high profile murder cases that took place this year was the murder of Lance Corporal Valentino Mesa, who was found dead with slash and gunshot wounds at the Pinggiran USJ police station on Aug 31. Two men were nabbed.
Several videos had gone viral, showing members of the public preventing civil servants from discharging their duties.
In one case, a woman wielding a steering wheel was seen yelling at a Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) officer, after the former’s car was clamped for parking in a lot reserved for the disabled in October.
A man had sprayed an unidentified liquid at another MPSJ officer after the former’s car was clamped for parking haphazardly in Bandar Kinrara, Puchong.
The death of 19-year-old Dutch national Ivana Esther Robert Smit, who fell to her death from the 20th floor in Jalan Dang Wangi on Dec 8, also caught the media’s attention.
The case had been classified as sudden death, but turned controversial when Smit’s father claimed there was foul play and that there were strangulation marks on his daughter’s neck.