PETALING JAYA – Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla says Siti Aishah (pic), the second woman detained in connection with the murder of Kim Jong-nam, was merely a victim of manipulation or fraud.

Indonesian portal Detik.com reported that Jusuf, speaking to journalists at his office on Friday, said he was confident that Siti Aishah was not a Korean agent as she was arrested in Malaysia, adding that if she was truly guilty, she would have gone off the radar completely.

“Why would she go and stay in a hotel in the same city, so close to the airport? It can only mean that she was a victim and manipulated in this situation,” he was reported as saying.

Detik.com also reported that a “citizens’ protection team” from Indonesia’s foreign affairs ministry had arrived in Malaysia to attend to Siti Aishah ‘s case.

The team’s director, M. Iqbal, said a team was at the prison in Selangor where Siti is being held, and have been communicating with the warden and law enforcement officers.

Prior to Siti Aishah’s arrest, a male suspect, Muhammad Farid Jalaluddin, 26, was arrested.

It is believed that he is her boyfriend and it was him who led the authorities to her location.

Siti Aishah was one of the two women detained in connection with the killing of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, on Monday.

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HONG KONG – Former Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang, the highest-ranking ex-official to be charged in the city’s history, was on Friday found guilty of one charge of misconduct in public office.

The nine-person jury, however, found Tsang not guilty of a second misconduct charge, and failed to reach a majority decision on a bribery charge.

Tsang, 72, had pleaded not guilty to one count of accepting an advantage and two counts of misconduct in public office between 2010 and 2012.

According to Hong Kong law, Tsang faces a possible seven-year sentence. Sentencing will take place later but the court did not announce a date.

The verdict came after six weeks of testimony from witnesses including Carrie Lam, Hong’s Kong’s former chief secretary who is in the running for the city’s leadership election next month.

Tsang, who was dressed in a suit and his trademark bow tie, emerged from the court with his wife and family, looking sombre after the verdict was handed down.

He gave no initial comment to media.

Tsang was accused of accepting refurbishment and decoration work on the three-storey penthouse in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen that he had rented from the Shenzhen East Pacific Group, owned by property tycoon Bill Wong Cho-bau. The jury failed to reach a majority decision on this charge after deliberating for nearly two days.

The first misconduct charge was for Tsang’s failure to disclose his rental negotiations with Wong while his cabinet discussed and approved a digital broadcasting licence for a now defunct radio company, Wave Media, in which Wong was a major shareholder, according to Hong Kong’s anti-graft agency, the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

He was found guilty on this count.

The second misconduct charge was in connection with Tsang’s nomination for a government award of an architect who had carried out design work on the Shenzhen penthouse.

He was found not guilty of that charge.

The once-popular, church-going son of a policeman found himself in hot water at the twilight of his lengthy career.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his distinguished public service under the British colonial administration before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.

His close links with the former British colonial government created unease in Beijing and among pro-Beijing elements in Hong Kong.

Instead of blaming their supposedly materialistic wives, erring police officers should own up to their corrupt ways just as the government should exert efforts to improve the criminal justice system, a psychiatrist said on Wednesday.

Dr Jessy Ang, who has attended to soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders, belied the thinking that policemen, who have been trained for years to handle conflict, could easily succumb to pressures from their materialistic wives.

This thinking reflects an attitude of scapegoatism in which one doesn’t want to take responsibility for his actions, according to Ang.

“We have to be accountable for our decisions, actions. You can’t say that you made a mistake because your spouse pressured you, or that because your child has a problem … . You should be mature enough to face the consequences,” Ang said on the sidelines of a press forum in Quezon City.

At the Philippine National Police’s mass wedding for its personnel at Camp Crame in Quezon City on Tuesday, Philippine National Police Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa told the wives of his men not to be materialistic as this was one of the major causes of policemen resorting to corruption.

Causes

“Do not pressure your husband to buy you (expensive) stuff so that he will not be pressured to look for income through illegal means that will lead to corruption,” Dela Rosa said.

Ang said the wife or any other family member should not be blamed for the actions of an erring policeman because it was only he who committed the corrupt act. Hence, the responsibility lies solely with the policeman.

One of the causes of lawmen being emboldened to engage in corruption is the lack of an “effective law enforcement” in the country, according to the psychiatrist.

Ang pointed out that in other countries, including the United States, people could not get away with violations as simple as speeding.

He also bemoaned the fact that the criminal justice system in the Philippines was tipped in favour of the rich and powerful.

Softhearted

Ang cited as an example the case of former President and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, who was convicted of plunder and was supposed to serve life in prison. Estrada was pardoned by his successor, former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“The problem with us Filipinos, as former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said, is that we are softhearted to people who commit major crimes. We should be firm and strict,” Ang said.

“If someone is violating the law, he should face the consequences and be given the right punishment,” said Ang, who was part of the Ninoy Aquino Movement in the 1980s.

BANGKOK – Thai cops have uncovered secret tunnels running underneath a space-age temple of the controversial Dhammakaya Buddhist sect, as their manhunt for an elusive elderly monk accused of massive embezzlement entered a second day.

Thousands of officers are involved in the search for the 72-year-old monk Phra Dhammachayo, who is believed to be holed up in the vast Wat Dhammakaya temple grounds on the outskirts of Bangkok.

The former abbot, who founded the breakaway Buddhist order in 1970 and has marshalled its prodigious rise, is accused of money laundering and accepting embezzled funds worth $33 million from the jailed owner of a cooperative bank.

But in an increasingly bizarre cat-and-mouse game, cops were frustrated for a second day running as they were led by orange-robed monks through endless rooms and hallways in the 1,000-acre site.

On Thursday police found a 1.5 kilometre tunnel — spilt into two routes — dug under the UFO-like temple that dominates the site, which may have been used by the ex-abbot as a place to hide.

“It only has one entrance but it does not go outside of the temple,” Police Colonel Worranan Srilum, deputy spokesman for the DSI — Thailand’s equivalent of the FBI — told reporters.

They also searched a sick bay used by the former abbot, but instead of finding their quarry, pulled back an orange robe covering several pillows arranged to look like a sleeping person.

“The Dhammakaya temple area is sprawling so it will have to take time to search… we can’t find him yet, but our intelligence insists that he is still inside (the) temple,” he added.

The sweep of the powerful and ultra-rich Wat Dhammakaya temple comes after Thailand’s junta chief invoked special powers to put its sprawling compound under military control.

Temple officials say the ex-abbot is innocent and deny knowledge of his whereabouts.

Read also: Thai cops find only medical kit in search for fugitive monk

Thailand’s secular authorities are normally reluctant to intervene in the affairs of the clergy in the Buddhist-majority country.

But the Dhammakaya sect has long been in the firing line. Critics accuse the temple of promoting a pay-your-way to nirvana philosophy, burnished with “cultish” mass shows of devotion and a sophisticated PR machine.

The temple is also mired in the kingdom’s treacherous politics, with rumoured links to ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and still hated by the Bangkok elite and their military allies.