Malaysia lists Sulu sultan as terrorist

Posted to the Mindanao Examiner (Apr 12, 2023): Malaysia lists Sulu sultan as terrorist

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Kuala Lumpur has listed as a terrorist one of the eight descendants of the sultan of Sulu who secured a disputed arbitration award against Malaysia last year.



A portrait of Sultan Muhammad Fuad A. Kiram I from The Royal Hashemite Sultanate of Sulu and Sabah.

The Filipino heirs of the last Sultan of Sulu are seeking to enforce a $14.9-billion award granted to them by a French arbitration court last year to settle a dispute with the Malaysian government over a colonial-era land deal.

Malaysian media reported that Khairul Dzaimee Daud, director-general of the Prime Minister’s Department’s legal affairs division, said the home ministry has listed Sultan Muhammad Fuad A. Kiram I as a terrorist.

Royal Sulu Force

According to the Free Malaysia Today, Khairul said Fuad has been linked to the Royal Sulu Force (RSF), which was also classified as a terrorist group, after the ailing Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, sent about 200 followers headed by his brother Raja Muda Agbimuddin Kiram to Sabah in February 2013 to assert their claim to and supposed historical rights over the oil-rich state.

Jamalul’s group rejected Malaysian demand for them to surrender peacefully and fighting erupted in Lahad Datu town where more than 60 of the sultan’s men were killed and over 300 Filipinos arrested on suspicion that they were aiding the group of Agbimuddin or the RSF.

Malaysia also put Jamalul and his brother on its wanted list and branded them as terrorists for intruding into Sabah and killing and decapitating 10 policemen and soldiers in separate clashes on the island.

Agbimuddin managed to escape the Malaysian assault in Sabah, while Sultan Jamalul died in October the same year from a lingering illness at age 75. Agbimuddin died from cardiac arrest in 2015 in Tawi-Tawi province.

There was no immediate statement or reaction from Fuad on the terrorist tag which took effect on April 6.

Khairul said the unity government would be taking a new approach in dealing with the Sulu heirs’ claim. “Previously, the approach (to deal with the case) was in the form of ‘firefighting’ with regards to the countries involved,” he said at a press conference Tuesday, April 11 in Putrajaya City.

He said, previously, the government would appeal against decisions by foreign courts and seek to set aside the awards granted. However, he said under the new leadership, the approach had been changed to an “offensive” mode, adding that “the best defence is (to) attack.”

Khairul also said the Cabinet had also agreed to the appointment of a UK-based public relations firm to manage the global narrative and media strategy regarding the case. However, he did not reveal the name of the firm, but said the legal affairs division would engage with stakeholders in Sabah on the case.

He also said Wisma Putra or the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sent a diplomatic note to the 171 countries where a US$14.92 billion (RM62.59 billion) award granted by the French arbitration court to the heirs of the last Sulu sultan was enforceable under the New York Convention.

Khairul said the foreign minister would also visit the four countries involved in the arbitration of the case, namely France, Spain, Luxembourg and Netherlands, to explain to his counterparts the issues and the facts surrounding the claim.

Seizure order

Last March, French bailiffs attempted to enforce a seizure order on three Paris properties owned by the Malaysian government in a case linked to a $15 billion court award to descendants of a former sultan, according to the heirs' lawyers and court documents.

The bailiffs tried to assess the properties recently following a court-issued seizure order in December, but Malaysian officials at the Paris embassy turned them away, the lawyers and the Malaysian government said.

The Paris properties are only the third set of Malaysian assets that the heirs have publicly acknowledged going after. They have secured a seizure order for Luxembourg units of state oil firm Petronas and have sought permission from a Dutch court to seize assets in the Netherlands.

The award is enforceable globally against most Malaysian assets, aside from diplomatic premises, under a UN convention on arbitration.

Despite the stay, a French judge in December 2022 granted the heirs' request to seize three Malaysian government properties in Paris to settle a debt of 2.3 million euros ($2.46 million) that they said was owed to them, according to court documents shared by the heirs' lawyers.

Malaysia had been ordered to pay the heirs the sum under a preliminary arbitration award granted to them in Spain, which was not bound by the stay in France, the lawyers said.

Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo

The Sultanate of Sulu was founded in 1457 and is believed to exist as a sovereign nation for at least 442 years. It stretches from a part of the island of Mindanao in the east, to Sabah, in the west and south, and to Palawan, in the north. It continues to lay claim to North Borneo, now Sabah in Malaysia after obtaining it from Brunei as a gift for helping put down a rebellion on Borneo Island.

The British leased Sabah and transferred control over the territory to Malaysia after the end of World War II. But the sultanate said it had merely leased North Borneo in 1878 to the British North Borneo Company for an annual payment of 5,000 Malayan dollars then, which was increased to 5,300 Malayan dollars in 1903.

North Borneo was annexed by Malaysia in 1963 after a referendum organized by the Cobbold Commission in 1962 saw the people of Sabah voting overwhelmingly to join Malaysia, but Kuala Lumpur continued to pay the Sulu Sultanate some 5,300 ringgits a year on the basis of the Sulu royals’ ceding the Borneo state and only stopped after the Lahad Datu incursion by the RSF members. (Mindanao Examiner, Free Malaysia Today)

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