Explain house arrest conditions, Pejuang urges home minister

Pejuang has urged home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail to explain the mechanism and conditions for inmates to be granted house arrests, following former prime minister Najib Razak’s conditional pardon.

Rafique Rashid Ali, the Perikatan Nasional component party’s information chief, said the minister must ensure there are no legal uncertainties in Najib’s house arrest, as part of his conditional pardon.

“What are the specific conditions that allow someone to be placed under house arrest? What is the mechanism for the execution of house arrest?

“The people do not want this house arrest to be used merely to satisfy certain political elites,” he said in a statement.

Rafique, a lawyer by profession, also pointed out that Article 8 the Federal Constitution provides for equal treatment and protection under the law.

He said granting house arrests without clear, transparent guidelines and conditions could give rise to perceptions of double standards, with the law imposed “comfortably” on elites and more strictly on regular folk.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s Department announced that following a Federal Territories Pardons Board meeting, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong decided to allow Najib to serve the remainder of a six-year jail sentence at his home provided he pays his RM50 million fine in his SRC International case.

Under the conditional pardon, Najib will serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest until Aug 23, 2028, subject to the payment of the fine.

Najib, 73, has been serving a six-year sentence at Kajang prison after the board halved his original 12-year sentence in February 2024. The original RM210 million fine was also reduced to RM50 million.