SINGAPORE (April 1): The trial of John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su-Ling kicked off on March 25 on an acrimonious note, with their lawyers complaining about procedural unfairness. Among other things, they seemed outraged that prosecutors gave them four statements made by one Gwee Yow Pin only on the Friday evening (March 22) before the trial.

Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan, who is acting for Soh, said that he had asked for Gwee’s statements on June 29, 2018. “The prosecution holds on to it right up to Friday evening, 7.55pm, when we asked for it in June 2018. That demands an answer,” he said. Sreenivasan added that prosecutors had not provided all the statements made by Gwee, and that there seemed to be gaps in some of the statements provided. According to Sreenivasan, the four statements by Gwee were dated April 14, 2014; April 15, 2014; April 16, 2014 and May 20, 2015. He pointed out that the statement dated April 16, 2014 began with a different series of question numbers than the previous day’s statement. “It refers to certain things in ‘yesterday’s statement’ that were not in the statement given to me,” he said. “Which means there were two statements recorded on April 15. They gave us the first one, skipped one, and then gave us [the one] on April 16.”

Philip Fong, who is acting for Quah, said that there also appeared to be a gap between the first and second statement by Gwee, evident from the disjointed series of question numbers. “So, that’s one gap already between the first and second statement. And, between the second and third statement,” he said... (Click here to read the full story)