Award, Then Denied: Court Halts £6M Payout to Family of Abducted Malaysian Pastor

In a stunning reversal, the Kuala Lumpur High Court has suspended a landmark RM37 million (£6 million) compensation payment awarded to the family of Pastor Raymond Koh Keng Joo, who was forcibly abducted from a public street in 2017 and is now feared dead. The court’s “stay of enforcement” halts the payout mandated in 2024, a ruling that found state police officers directly involved in the brazen, military-style abduction. Justice Mahazan Mat Taib cited “special circumstances” and the need to prevent “financial risk” to the government, effectively freezing the funds that were to be held in trust until Pastor Koh’s whereabouts were ascertained. The decision leaves the pastor’s widow, Susanna Liew, in a nine-year limbo of grief and pursuit of justice, now compounded by what she calls a “profoundly troubling” legal about-face.

The case has long shaken Malaysia, spotlighting issues of religious freedom and state accountability. Pastor Koh, who ran a charity aiding HIV/AIDS patients and recovering addicts, had previously been investigated for allegedly attempting to convert Muslims, which is illegal in the majority-Muslim nation. His 2017 kidnapping, captured on CCTV and witnessed by multiple bystanders who described 15 men emerging from three black SUVs, became a national scandal. For his family, the latest ruling is not merely a financial setback but a devastating erosion of hard-won legal recognition of the state’s culpability. “To now deprive me of the very sums lawfully awarded to me compounds the injustice,” Liew stated, underscoring a bitter sentiment that the pursuit of truth and restitution remains, like her husband’s fate, unresolved.