My pregnant daughter was driven into a forest and shot twice in the head before her killer blew up her body with military explosives. He’s now walking free in Australia after High Court decision – and no one told me

The father of a pregnant woman murdered by a Malaysian hitman has expressed his horror after learning the killer has been released in Australia following the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling on immigration detention.

Mongolian mother-of-two Altantuya Shaariibuu, 28, died in 2006 when she was driven to a forest on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur and shot twice in the head by hitman Sirul Azhar Umar as she begged for mercy.

Sirul, who had been a bodyguard to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, then used military explosives to blow up her body.

There have long been rumors in Malaysia that Umar was ordered to kill Altantuya to prevent her from revealing alleged illegal payments made in connection with a $2 billion submarine deal on which she worked as a translator.

The theory has never been proven and the identity of who paid Sirul to take out Altantuya remains unknown.

He fled Malaysia to Australia in January 2015, where he was arrested and held indefinitely at Sydney’s Villawood immigration detention centre.

Sirul, who is now in his 50s, could not be extradited to Malaysia because he would have faced the death penalty.

But now, almost nine years later, Sirul is at large and now roaming the streets of Canberra following the Supreme Court’s decision to release as many as 92 hardened foreign criminals held in immigration detention.

Altantuya’s father Shaariibuu Setev, a Mongolian film professor, was not told that his daughter’s killer had been released and only found out when he was contacted by The Weekend Australia.

He said he was “so disappointed in Australia.”

“I never thought Australia would release him,” he added.

Professor Shaariibuu said Australian officials had not contacted him to let him know his daughter’s killer would be released.

‘Where are the human rights for the victim’s family? We are here, we are still alive and suffering,” he said.

‘I really wonder why Australia would release a murderer. It makes me think that all the murderers in the world could go to Australia, spend time in immigration detention and eventually be released and become free men.”

Sirul has refused to say who he was working for when he killed Altantuya, saying only that he did so on the orders of “important people.”

Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Razak Najib has denied ever meeting Altantuya. In 2018, he said: ‘I have recorded that I swore in the name of Allah in a mosque that I had nothing to do with the case.

‘I still maintain that I didn’t know she died until four or five days after death… that was the first time I heard about her. There is no evidence that I ever knew her.’

After leaving Villawood, Sirul headed to Canberra, where he lives with his son, his lawyer William Levingston said.

He previously applied for asylum in Australia in 2019, but this was rejected.

The Supreme Court ruled last Wednesday that Australia’s indefinite detention system was unlawful, releasing 84 asylum seekers with 340 decisions pending.

Among those released is a pedophile who raped a 10-year-old boy in Sydney’s west.

The criminals served prison sentences for their crimes, but could not be deported for various reasons beyond the government’s control.

Labor strongly opposed their release from detention, with Home Secretary Clare O’Neil saying as a mother herself: ‘If there was anything in her power to keep these people in detention, (she) absolutely would’.

Labor pushed the legislation through both houses of parliament and backed coalition amendments that hit released asylum seekers with even stricter rules.

New rules include the wearing of ankle bracelets, strict curfews, a ban on coming within 150 meters of childcare centers and mandatory minimum sentences of one year if the rules are broken.

Documents filed in the Senate show that 18 of the foreigners detained indefinitely were from Afghanistan.

A total of 17 came from Iran, 10 reached Australia from Sudan, while nine were listed as ‘stateless’ – meaning they have no country to return to.

Other countries high on the list included South Sudan, Eritrea and Sri Lanka – while one asylum seeker was originally from New Zealand.

The new information also shows that 27 of the 92 released prisoners have been referred to immigration ministers due to the seriousness of their offense – and explains why their visas were revoked on character grounds.

Some of those in each category committed their crimes abroad, while some of the crimes took place in Australia.

The new documents show that 21 former detainees were referred to the immigration minister over several years under the category ‘national security, cybercrime, serious and high-profile organized or gang-related’.

More than 50 percent of former detainees have been in prison for more than five years. Six of them have been in immigration detention for more than ten years.