Malaysia Update : KUALA LUMPUR -- The Commission of Inquiry investigating the death of political aide Teoh Beng Hock was told on Monday that communication service providers cannot trace contents of SMSes and telephone calls after a long period of time.
Celcom Transmission senior manager Mohd Norizal Hasim said SMS and telephone records could only be kept up to 30 days.
"After 30 days, all data will be forwarded to the billing division. Once this is done, all captured data will be lost," he said in reply to a question from the commission's chairman Federal Court judge James Foong Cheng Yuen.
Foong had asked him why the commission's independent investigator Michael Leslie Squires was having difficulty retrieving SMS and telephone records from the mobile telephones of Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers and the deceased, which had been placed under seal.
"In this case, the investigating officer (Michael) had gone to Celcom but he returned with the information that Celcom did not keep the records," said Foong.
Prior to this, the commission was informed that the handphones of six MACC officers did not have any contents for the 15th, 16th and 17th of July 2009 and information was also not available from Teoh's handphone.
Mohd Norizal, the 40th witness to testify in the inquiry, also said back up records were kept up to a year but these only contained the time, date and the numbers of the calling and receiving telephones, but no SMS contents.
"The SMS contents also can only be retrieved if the SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) Card is opened via another telephone," he said in reply to another question from laywer S. Sivaneindiren from the Bar Council.
Meanwhile, Putrjaya MACC officer Mohamad Azhar Abang Mentari told the inquiry he thought his colleague Mohd Fauzi Shadoollah was joking when the latter informed him of Teoh's death as they often had humorous exchanges.
Questioned by Choew Wee from the Bar Council whether he had contacted anyone about this, Mohamad Azhar said: "I did call MACC inteligence officer Hafiz Izhar Idris."
Another MACC officer, Effezul Azran Abd Maulop, from the Selangor MACC headquarters, told the inquiry that he was informed of Teoh's death by MACC investigating officer Mohd Anuar Ismail at 2pm on July 16, 2009.
He said Mohd Anuar then brought him down to the 5th floor landing of Plaza Masalam where Teoh's body lay.
Teoh, 30, who was the political aide of Selangor executive councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah, was found dead on the fifth floor corridor of Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam on July 16, 2009, after being questioned overnight at the Selangor MACC office on the 14th floor.
Besides Foong, the other members the commission are former Federal Court judge Abdul Kadir Sulaiman, former Court of Appeal judge T.S.Nathan, Penang Hospital's forensic pathologist Dr Bhupinder Singh and Dean of Cyberjaya Medical Science College University, Professor Dr Mohamed Hatta Shaharom .
(Bernama)
(Bernama)
