AmBank robbery mastermind ‘Joemar’ also a guard

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 13 — The mastermind behind the AmBank robbery in Subang Jaya last month worked as a security guard at a company for more than a year, police disclosed yesterday.

Joemar began working as a guard upon his arrival to Malaysia one and a half years ago. He held a fake MyKad bearing the name Osman Salleh.

Police are talking to the Klang Valley-based company where he worked to find out more about the mysterious suspect.

“We believe he is also an Indonesian but are unsure as to exactly where he hails from,” said Selangor police chief Datuk Mohd Shukri Dahlan.

Police believe the man is still in the country and has the remaining RM430,000 stolen from the bank.

Police managed to retrieve RM21,800 of the RM450,000 robbed from the bank on Oct 23.

The main suspect, a 36-year-old security guard, who allegedly shot bank officer Norazita Abu Bakar, 37, in the head during the robbery, was arrested on Sunday and has been remanded for a week.

The arrest led to the discovery of the pump-gun used in the robbery-cum-murder, some 700 metres away from the crime scene.

“Joemar was believed to be waiting outside the bank and rode the getaway motorcycle.

Eleven others, including the alleged shooter’s relatives and friends, were arrested earlier.

Ten will be charged with possession of fake MyKads while one will be charged with dishonestly receiving the stolen money and disposing of evidence.

Anyone with information on Joemar can contact Rakan Cop at 03-2052 9999.

MPs: Guns for Islamic enforcers a terrible idea

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 13 — Proposing to arm Islamic enforcement officers over a shooting still under investigation was an overreaction that would exacerbate Malaysia’s struggle with gun violence, said disapproving lawmakers.

The Pakatan Rakyat parliamentarians added the plan mooted by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom could bring no positives as it encourages gun culture in Malaysia.

“It’s a terrible idea. What would the rationale be for arming them? If you conduct moral raids, why do you need firearms? You are not going to catch gangsters or robbers. That’s the police’s job,” DAP’s Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari said when contacted.

“These are not trained professionals. The police are trained to use firearms for law enforcement, but these people are not law enforcement officers,” he added, referring to religious officers.

Yesterday, Jamil was reported to have proposed arming religious department enforcement officers, after the fatal shooting of Pahang Islamic Religious Department chief Ahmad Rafli Abdul Malek on Sunday.

“We want the safety aspect to be upgraded. The enforcement officers can be given firearms during operations or we can have more patrols on their homes,” the minister in charge of Islamic affairs was quoted as saying by national news agency Bernama.

Police on Monday urged members of the “Tuhan Harun” religious sect to surrender over Ahmad Rafli’s shooting, which has been linked to the state’s ban on the Shiah denomination.

Zairil, however, argued that the government and the authorities cannot use one case as the basis for pushing such a drastic move as arming religious officers.

He said the motive for the murder has not even been established, and criticised the plan as a primitive response from the powers-that-be.

“This is more reflective of a very crude mentality, that the solution to everything is either violence or banning.

“Especially in religion, the solution is education, not anything else. There needs to be more community engagement and involvement, not damning, and certainly not arming people.

“This is the problem with the mentality, especially among our leaders in government... we are going about trying to fix things in a very ignorant way,” he said.

PKR’s Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli agreed that putting guns in the hands of religious officers would be a band-aid on the core problem of deteriorating national security, pointing to what he said was the police’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the rising trend of serious crimes.

He said that while the Pahang shooting was a tragedy, it only reflected the issue of crime spiralling out of control in the country.

“What happens to gun control? Where does it stop? We’ve had a senior Customs officer gunned down and they will ask for guns, and maybe an IRB (Inland Revenue Board) officer is gunned down by an errant tax payer. Will we give them guns too?” he said when contacted.

Rafizi said the government must deal with the root cause of the security problem by beefing up the police’s capabilities in fighting crime, instead of giving religious officers guns on a whim.

“What happened is not that much different from what happened to the AmBank employee, or what happened to the AmBank founder,” he said, referring to bank officer Norazita Abu Talib, 37, and Ambank founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi, 75, who were shot and killed in two separate incidents.

“The root cause is what really happened to the effectiveness of the police force. Despite claims by the home minister that the crime rate has gone down, public security is not there.

“This is quite a new phenomenon in Malaysia, where people can just walk up to your house or face and shoot as if it’s from a Hollywood movie... I don’t think people feel safe now,” he said.

Shootings and gun murders exploded into the nation’s consciousness in August when Arab-Malaysian Development Bank founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi was assassinated in broad daylight by a gunman in Kuala Lumpur, just days after the chairman of crime watchdog MyWatch, R. Sri Sanjeevan, survived an attempted hit in Negri Sembilan on July 27.

Since then, Malaysians have grappled with growing violence that at one point saw daily shootings, both fatal and otherwise.