Malaysian held over Mongolian model's grisly murder loses Australian asylum bid

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A fugitive Malaysian policeman convicted of the grisly murder of a Mongolian model has lost a bid for asylum in Australia, where he has been held since 2015, raising the prospect he could be deported.

Sirul Azhar Umar and another police officer, Azilah Hadri, were sentenced to death after being found guilty in Malaysia of the murder of 28-year-old Altantuya Shaariibuu, an interpreter to a former associate of ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Shaariibuu was reportedly blown up with military grade explosives in a forest on the outskirts of Malaysia's capital in 2006 in a case shrouded in mystery 13 years later.

Sirul was arrested and has been held in an Australian immigration detention center since January 2015, after fleeing Malaysia shortly before the verdict was handed down.

He lost his bid for asylum on Monday when the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Sydney upheld an earlier ruling that he had committed a “non-political” crime in Malaysia and so was not entitled to protection in Australia.

“None of the findings made by the courts in Malaysia suggested that the crime in question was a political one,” Tribunal Deputy President Brian Rayment said in a written decision first reported by Australian media on Wednesday.

Sirul can appeal but his lawyers said they had not yet been instructed to do so. Nor had Sirul been served with any extradition request or deportation notice, they said. Sirul could not be reached for comment.

He and Azilah were serving as members of Najib's personal security detail at the time of the murder, but the question of who ordered the killing has never been answered.

Since Najib's spectacular defeat at last year's general election, Malaysian police have re-opened the case and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said his government could revoke Sirul's death penalty to make way for his extradition.

Under Australian law, Sirul can only be deported if he does not face the death penalty. A spokesman for the Australian attorney-general said the government did not comment publicly on extradition cases.