Rahimi told cops about Najib, Rosmah-Saiful connection

The statutory declarations which Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim's former aide Rahimi Osman said he was forced to sign is

believed to mirror his statement to the police, said lawyer Latheefa Koya.

According to Latheefa, who was named as one of the persons to force Rahimi's hand in his police report yesterday, the 25-year-old had told her this after he gave his police statement on July 23, 2008.

The other person named is lawyer and PKR Youth Kedah chief Saiful Izham Ramli, who had prepared the first statutory declaration signed by Rahimi at Quality Hotel on June 28, 2008.

Rahimi, 25, (right) said that the statutory declarations implicated Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor in the sodomy charge against Anwar.

"(Rahimi) told me that he was asked if he knew Mumtaz and if he had met Najib and Rosmah," she said.

Sodomy complainant Mohd Saiful Bukhary Azlan had also testified in court he had met Najib and Rosmah as well as one Mumtaz Jaafar, said to be Rosmah's friend.

Rahimi may be committing perjury

Latheefa, who is also PKR information chief, added that she cannot confirm the exact details of the police statement as it is standard procedure to not give a copy to the witness.

“We believe that there are more details in the statement, compared to the statutory declarations,” she said.

If this is true, added vice-president R Sivarasa who was also at Quality Hotel on June 28, Rahimi may face perjury charges for changing his statutory declarations.

"If he has made another statutory declaration to say that the earlier declarations are false, and if the new declaration contradicts the police statement, then it is a classic offence of perjury which is a serious criminal offence," he said.

The maximum penalty for perjury is a jail term of seven years.

Sivarasa added that the former aide, who left Anwar's office in 2008 a few days before Saiful Bukhari lodged his police report, cannot say he made the police statement under duress.

This is because he was accompanied by his then-lawyer Stanley Sinnapan.

Sinnapan, however, cannot reveal what had taken place between the police and Rahimi without the latter's authorisation.

According to Latheefa's lawyer N Surendran, a letter will be sent to Rahimi demanding that he retract his statement and apologise or face criminal defamation charges.

The letter will be send in the next 24 hours, demanding that Rahimi apologise within 24 hours of receiving it.

A similar letter will also be sent to media that the PKR lawyers claim to have “twisted the facts” in their reports of yesterday's event.