Firstly, don’t forget the gathering at the Kelana Jaya Stadium, 4.30pm, Sunday 18th July to commemorate Teo Beng Hock’s passing.
Picture someone took at Masjid Jamek:
One of the strange aspects of the story is why Teo would have decided to stay on in a place where he was made to endure such a terrible experience, even at 4am.
The testimony of Tan Boon Hwa, who I think is the last known person to have seen Teo alive, is revealing. Three things worthy of note: how abusive his own interrogation was, the fact that he was held overnight, and his observations of Teo at 6am:
Tan said that the two officers who questioned him tried to extract false confession from him, pressuring him to deny that he supplied 1,500 national flags for a Merdeka function at the Sri Kembangan state constituency.
During the interrogation, Tan said the officers used the ‘good cop, bad cop’ technique; initially being polite but later switching to verbally abusing him and making him to stand for four hours between 10pm to 2am.
Tan was questioned on the same day Teoh Beng Hock, the political secretary to Selangor executive councillor Ean Yong Hean Wah, was also interrogated by MACC.
According to Tan, he was threatened with physical violence, with one officer pointing to his forehead and allegedly saying, “You don’t lie. This is my place. I can hit you. Believe me!“
During interrogations, he said other officers would randomly walk into the room to mock his poor command of Bahasa Malaysia and used derogatory terms such as “Cina bodoh” (stupid Chinese) and asked him if he was a Chinese citizen.
The worst intimidation, Tan said, were threats to his family which he described as “mental torture“.
“They said that if I don’t ‘tell the truth’, they will take away my wife and there would be no one to care for the children. But I did not give in,” said Tan, during a press conference at the Selangor state secretariat today.
He was allowed to sleep on the carpeted floor and the interrogation continued the following morning.
To top it off, when he was released the following day at about 1.30pm, Tan said he was asked by MACC staff not to make an issue over their interrogation technique.
When asked, Tan said he did not know that Teoh was in the same building when he was brought there. The duo met only when Tan woke up at about 6am the following day while on the way to the toilet.
“He was in the pantry. I greeted him, but he replied only with a ‘Umh’. But when I came out of the toilet, he was gone. He did look a little tired,” said Tan.
The MACC says that Teoh was released at 3.45am yesterday but he chose to “stay back and sleep on a couch, where he was last seen at 6am.”
Very strange. I guess we can conclude that he was alive at 6am.
The MACC say he was released at 4am, but Tan on the other hand, was allowed to sleep but still detained by the MACC, as interrogations continued the next morning.
Would it be reasonable to conclude that Teo was also in fact still under MACC detention? That he was not released, but ‘allowed to sleep,’ just like Tan?
I suppose it would make more sense than Teo being allowed to leave at 4am, but inexplicably deciding to stay on.
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The public should also be given full access to the notes from Teo’s interrogation - given the circumstances of his death. The longer this is delayed, the more likely they will be tampered with.
His handphone, in police custody, which might reveal important information, can also be easily tampered with.
The torn pants did not concern me much at first, but they now seem curiouser and curiouser.
The autopsy report will be the next big development. But once again, credibility becomes such a crucial issue.
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Whatever the odds, we must continue to apply pressure for the truth to be made known. Failure to do so after Altantuya and dozens upon dozens of deaths in custody unaccounted for will condemn our children to a government of murderers.
This week, a woman was widowed, a child deprived of his father forever. How many more?
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