In his petition of appeal filed in the Court of Appeal on Monday, the former prime minister said judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan only took into consideration the case laws provided by the prosecution to arrive at his verdict.

“The judge erred in law and fact when he ignored that Sri Ram’s appointment (in August 2018) was a serious conflict under the Federal Constitution and the Criminal Procedure Code,” Najib said in the petition seen by FMT.

Further, Najib said the judge had failed to notice that his application to recuse Sri Ram was novel although he (Najib) had filed a similar move in another case.

Zaini was also wrong, he said, to state that his application to revoke Sri Ram’s appointment was an abuse of court process when it was filed after new evidence emerged.

Najib added that Zaini also erred when he concluded that former attorney-general Tommy Thomas’ media statement and appointment letter for Sri Ram was “a mistake in draft.”

“It was perhaps a poor choice of words and in hindsight, could have been drafted or said better,” Zaini had said in his judgment, but Najib ‘s stand was that the appointment letter was ordinarily plain and clear in its meaning.

The Pekan MP said Sri Ram was also prejudiced towards him as he had labelled him “the criminal Najib.”

Further, he said the judge refused to consider the affidavits of another former AG Mohamed Apandi Ali and his wife Faridah Begum K A Abdul Kader in support of Sri Ram’s removal.

The Court of Appeal is scheduled to fix the appeal hearing date during a case management on June 1.

On Feb 15, Zaini dismissed Najib’s application, saying it was without basis and misplaced.

In Apandi’s affidavit, the former AG said Sri Ram had told him that then opposition leader Dr Mahathir Mohamad had ordered him (Apandi) to arrest Najib for an unspecified offence in January 2018.

He claimed that Sri Ram was involved in the 1MDB-related investigations by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and, therefore, it would have caused him to pre-judge the culpability of the matter.

However, Zaini in his oral judgment had said that Sri Ram did not demonstrate any bias when carrying out his duty as senior public prosecutor.

Najib, 67, and former 1MDB chief executive officer Arul Kanda Kandasamy, 45, are on trial over 1MDB audit report tampering charges before Zaini.

He is charged with using his position to order amendments to the 1MDB final audit report before it was presented to the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament in order to avoid any action taken against him.

Arul Kanda is charged with abetting Najib in making the amendments to the report to protect Najib from being subjected to action.

This is not the only time that Najib has sought to remove Sri Ram as the lead prosecutor.

Najib first attempted to disqualify the former federal court judge in 2018 in another trial where he faced 25 charges of corruption and money laundering in the alleged transfer of 1MDB funds into his accounts.

In that case, the Federal Court in 2019 ruled that Sri Ram’s appointment was valid.