If you want a genuinely dramatic courtroom moment, the Federal Court delivered one on 13 July, when Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman's acquittal was upheld in a split decision after three judges took turns reading separate judgments, and for a stretch of the hearing, nobody in the room, including Syed Saddiq himself, knew which way it would go.
The case dated back to 2020, when Syed Saddiq was accused of abetting Bersatu Youth's then assistant treasurer, Rafiq Hakim Razali, in misappropriating RM1 million in party funds, along with a separate charge involving RM120,000 from Armada Bumi Bersatu Enterprise. The High Court convicted him on all four charges in 2023, sentencing him to seven years' jail, two strokes of the cane and a RM10 million fine. The Court of Appeal unanimously overturned that conviction in 2025, and the Attorney General's Chambers pushed for one final appeal at the Federal Court.
Court of Appeal president Abu Bakar Jais, who chaired the three-judge panel, opened by reminding everyone in the room that all three judgments needed to be heard before anyone drew conclusions. His own verdict, delivered first, would have convicted Syed Saddiq on three of the four charges. Then judge Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali dismissed the prosecution's appeal entirely, finding that Bersatu's party constitution was not law and that the prosecution had failed to prove the essential elements of the offences. That set up a genuine cliffhanger, with the outcome resting entirely on the third judge.
After a short recess, during which the deputy public prosecutor famously asked for a toilet break to laughter in the courtroom, judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah sided with Ruzima. Two votes to one. Syed Saddiq remained a free man, and supporters in the public gallery were seen wiping away tears and hugging one another.
Abu Bakar closed proceedings with an unusually personal note, referencing Syed Saddiq's upcoming marriage to fiancée Bella Astillah and wishing him well, a moment that briefly turned a tense legal ruling into something almost tender.
Six years is a long time for any case to hang over someone's career and personal life. The charges were filed under Section 406 and Section 403 of the Penal Code, along with two counts under the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001, allegations serious enough to have carried a combined maximum of well over a decade in prison had the conviction stood. Ruzima's written judgment specifically addressed the RM120,000 charge, finding the money had originally come from two fundraising events, one in Muar and one at a hotel in Ampang, held specifically to fund Syed Saddiq's own political campaign, which meant he was its rightful beneficial owner rather than someone who had misappropriated funds belonging to the party. Whatever your politics, watching a case take this long to resolve, and come down this close to a single vote, is worth pausing on.
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