After being exposed yet again as liars for publicly alleging they did not pay the bulk of Sarawak Report’s legal fees to the tune of UK£260,000 (RM1.4m), PAS spokesmen have now spun a whole further set of untruths to protect their party and its boss Hadi Awang.

First they said they said the cheque was a fake, which was soon proved wrong.  So, now they are saying their mandated mediator organised PAS’s payment for the settlement of Hadi’s case on behalf of Anwar Ibrahim instead!

This despite the fact that the terms of the settlement make clear that the money would only be payable after Hadi’s case had been discontinued by the UK court (which required the agreement of Sarawak Report’s own lawyers in London).

Why should Anwar demand such terms or even bother to settle the case?

It was Hadi who was tied up in knots over PAS’s conflicting evidence before the court, which gave them a motive to settle and nobody else (apart from the waste of time and money involved in any libel case).

The mediator is a respected figure and widely known in KL business and political circles, who is also an established patron of PAS and Hadi Awang in particular. Hence, Sarawak Report took the approach seriously and eventually agreed to settle if its fees were largely covered.

In this respect the mediator did Hadi a massive favour by persuading Sarawak Report to forego the satisfaction of seeing the PAS leadership attempt to defend what they have now admitted were indeed lies in the witness box. Yet PAS leaders now seem to wish to disown this gentleman and his sensible efforts on their behalf, in favour of continuing their novel policy of ‘sharia lying’.

The blogger ‘RPK’ has been particularly vocal with such lies, not least it has to be assumed because his own brother was a key negotiator in the agreement struck with Sarawak Report. Raja Idris Kamarudin was however the most resistant party on the PAS side, seeking to pay SR as little as possible and seeking also to demand ‘apologies’ that Sarawak Report would never provide.

His unrealistic posturing was eventually over-ruled by Hadi himself, who authorised the meeting between a team of PAS representatives (including the mediator and a lawyer) and Sarawak Report’s KL lawyers, where the escrow payment and settlement terms were finally agreed.

So, Sarawak Report’s one question to Hadi and PAS is this, now that party spokesmen and defenders (particularly RPK) are untruthfully alleging that the payment was not made by them but by somebody else:

What are they claiming were the “agreed confidential terms of settlement” refered to by the UK Order of the High Court between the parties if they did not include this payment to Sarawak Report?

Will Hadi’s PAS spokesmen (he seems to have gone a bit quiet himself) try to pretend perhaps that it was Sarawak Report who paid him?  Or maybe they will claim that there was a confidential settlement where each side agreed to pay its own costs?

In which case, please provide the evidence.