By Dorcas Ting
KUCHING, Mar 10: The Court of Appeal here on Monday (Mar 9) reduced the prison sentence of convicted paedophile Alladin Lanim after allowing his appeal to have several jail terms run concurrently instead of consecutively.
A three-member bench led by Datuk Wong Kian Kheong, sitting with Datuk Alwi Abdul Wahab and Datin Paduka Evrol Mariette Peters, ruled that the three prison sentences imposed earlier should run at the same time. The decision effectively reduced the 45-year-old’s total imprisonment from 50 years to 32 years.
However, the court maintained the sentence of 31 strokes of the cane.
In January 2024, High Court Judge Iris Awen Jon had sentenced Alladin, who pleaded guilty to three charges under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act (SOACA) 2017, to a total of 40 years’ imprisonment and 21 strokes of the cane.
The penalties included 22 years’ jail and 10 strokes for producing child pornography, five years’ imprisonment with three strokes for making child sexual abuse material, and 13 years’ jail with eight strokes for using a 13-year-old boy in the production of the material. The sentences were ordered to run consecutively.
In a separate earlier case, Sessions Court Judge Musli Abdul Hamid also convicted Alladin after he pleaded guilty to using a nine-year-old boy in the production of pornographic material.
He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment and 10 strokes of the cane, which was ordered to begin after the High Court sentence.
Following the Court of Appeal’s ruling, the prison terms imposed by the High Court will now run concurrently, reducing the total jail time to 32 years, although the combined caning sentence of 31 strokes remains.
During the hearing, National Legal Aid Foundation lawyer Chai Yuen Hui, representing Alladin, urged the court to impose a more compassionate sentence on his client.
He argued that in some cases involving more serious offences, the punishments handed down were lighter.
Chai also said his client accepted the caning sentence without conditions and did not challenge that part of the punishment. He added that the appellant had shown remorse and pleaded guilty at an early stage of the proceedings.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Shamala Jaganathan, however, maintained that the appellant had failed to demonstrate any legal error or that the sentence imposed by the lower court was excessive.
She argued that the punishment was appropriate and that consecutive sentences were justified to reflect the gravity of the offences and to safeguard the public.
According to the case facts, police raided the accused’s quarters in Biawak in 2021 and arrested him after discovering thousands of explicit images and videos involving children stored on his mobile phone.
Investigations revealed that the accused had produced the materials himself and used the victims in the recordings. In one instance, he allegedly gave a victim another mobile phone to play games while he recorded and photographed the boy performing sexual acts.
Authorities later found a total of 7,371 images and 2,541 videos involving the victims and several other children on the device. The offences were committed at the quarters between Aug 13, 2018, and Dec 6, 2020. — DayakDaily
