Kota Kinabalu: A forensic scientist told the Coroner’s Court on Monday that the ‘Love and Peace’ journal which believed belonged to Zara Qairina Mahathir, suffered the most extensive damage, with most of its pages and even the cover had been torn.
Dr Wan Nur Syuhaila Mat Desa, told coroner Amir Shah Amir Hassan that in the said journal modification was made on the front face down.
The 77th deponent, whose expertise includes forensic and analytical chemistry, particularly fire debris and drug analysis as well as the physical and chemical examination of questioned documents, explained that “front face down” refers specifically to the construction of a book.
“In comparison with a new reference journal, this journal demonstrates that the ‘Love and Peace’ journal is the most incomplete.
“When we look at how the book is constructed, it’s actually that there is a sheet of paper and then it is torn in the middle, one sheet of paper becomes two sheets of paper,” she said.
Dr Wan who was an independent expert witness called by Zara’s mother Noraidah Lamat through her legal team, explained that the entire sheet of paper had been torn, leaving torn edges in the middle, which she and her team physically fitted together.
“When we did the physical fit reconstruction, we can categorise that all those individual sheets can be grouped to group one and group two.
“We also managed to by reconstruction determine the order of the sheets being handed to me, we determine the exact order and the reconstruction was able to show that Y1 to Y15 referring to my findings Y1 to Y15 is actually divided to two text blocks, so group one is one text block, group two is another text block,” she said.
In answering questions from counsel Mohd Luqman Syazwan Zabidi, Dr Wan said that originally in the journal, it has six text blocks from the three new reference books she examined.
“In the ‘Love and Peace’ journal, we only able to see the remaining three text blocks and five sheets of perhaps that the papers that are left from the third text blocks.
“So the first two text blocks are not in Zara’s journal, with the reconstruction of Y1 - Y15, we are able to say that these Y1 - Y15 actually comes from two text blocks, that’s what the reconstruction of the ‘Love and Peace’ journal tells us, by doing the physical fit, we determine the order which sheet comes first and then which match the top page reconnects with the last page and so on,” she testified.
To another question, Dr Wan said that she had examined four journals and 15 loose sheets papers for this assignment.
Earlier, in reading out her witness statement, she stated that in the ‘Love and Peace’ journal, she found and recovered indented impressions on pages 1, 4, 7, 17, 37, 50, 51 and 53.
“No matching pages in this journal correspond to the recovered impressions, this suggests that pages which used to contain this content are no longer in the journal,” said Dr Wan.
She also stated that her examination was non-destructive, it did not involve cutting, removing or chemically altering any parts of the document and the document remains available for further examinations.
“My conclusions are based only on the physical characteristics of the documents and any indented impressions recovered.
“I do not comment on why any entry was written, when it was written, or what it means, only on how the documents fit together physically and what impressions were recovered.
“I did not myself compare any recovered handwriting against any individual’s handwriting to determine authorship, all findings in this statement are my own.
“My findings are based solely on the documents made available to me, the detailed results of my examination, including images of the recovered impressions, are set out at Appendices B-1 and B-2 of our joint Forensic Document Examination Report, which I adopt and rely upon for the purposes of this statement,” she added.
