KUALA LUMPUR, 24 March 2018:
The sessions court here yesterday found an Egyptian university medical graduate and a hotel worker guilty – of acting as pimps and living off immoral earnings.
Judge Datin M. Kasasundary sentenced Khairul Azzuar Yusoff, 30, and Mohyuddin Ahmad Fajaruddin, 24, to 14 years imprisonment and two strokes of the cane, each, after ruling the defence had failed to cast any reasonable doubt on the prosecution’s case against the duo.
During the trial, the prosecution called eight witnesses and the defence, two.
Khairul Azzuar – who faced two charges – was handed seven years and one whipping for acting as a pimp for an Indonesian woman in her 20s at a hotel in Jalan Imbi here, and similar punishment for living off the immoral earnings of the woman.
He committed both offences between 2pm and 11.30pm in January 2017. The judge ordered the sentences to run consecutively from his arrest date on 7 Feb 2017.
Mohyuddin Ahmad faced four charges and was handed seven years and one whipping on one charge of acting as a pimp for an Indonesian woman also in her 20s, at a hotel in Jalan Changkat Thambi Dollah, and similar punishment on another charge of living off her immoral earnings.
The judge ordered the sentences to run consecutively from his arrest date on 7 Feb 2017.
He was handed seven years on the next charge of acting as a pimp for the same Indonesian woman at a hotel in Jalan Imbi here and similar punishment for living off her immoral earnings. He committed the four offences between 1pm and 11pm, between October 2016 and December 2016.
The judge ordered the two latter sentences to run concurrent with the first two charges.
Earlier in mitigation, counsel Suzanawaty Ismail – who represented both men – said they were not running a brothel and did not confine or force the women into prostitution.
“The women were the ones who had looked for them and offered themselves for the services,” the lawyer told the court.
Deputy public prosecutor Rozaliana Zakaria countered that although there was no element of coercion in the case, the two accused had allowed the women and society to make the wrong decision and take the immoral path as well as involved themselves in activities that went against morality and religion.
– Bernama