KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 — Major Zaidi Ahmad will turn to the civil courts to challenge the court martial that ordered his sacking for publicly disclosing weakness in the indelible ink used in Election 2013, his lawyer confirmed today.

When contacted, Zaidi’s lawyer Mohamed Hanipa Maidin said they will wait for the court martial’s sentence to be officially endorsed before filing for judicial review in the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

“I’ve already got instructions from my client to file and to challenge the decision.

“For us, the decision was too harsh and disproportionate to the crime allegedly committed by my client,” he told Malay Mail Online.

On Monday, a five-man panel in the military court here found Zaidi to be guilty of two charges - publishing an article without consent of the Defence Ministry, and revealing the contents of official documents on the indelible ink without authorisation from the Malaysian Armed Forces Council.

The court martial decided to dismiss the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) officer from his 26 years of service over his breach of military protocol, but said the sentence must be first confirmed by a confirming officer.

It is understood that it typically takes two weeks for the notes of court proceedings to be handed over to the confirming officer before the ruling is endorsed. Zaidi’s credentials would also have to be retracted before he officially loses his status as an RMAF personnel.

This new judicial review application against the guilty verdict and sacking is on top of an existing judicial review application, with Hanipa saying today he will apply for the court to hear these two applications together.

Hanipa also confirmed he will ask the Kuala Lumpur High Court to stay the execution of the military court’s sentence until the judicial review hearings are over.

He said the High Court is empowered to grant such a stay application, adding that the military court ruling would be annulled if the civil court decides that the panel should have been dissolved.

On February 5, the Kuala Lumpur High Court will hear Zaidi’s existing application to seek a judicial review of the military’s convening authority’s failure to dissolve the court martial panel, even after allegations of “bias” by one of the presiding officers.

According to Hanipa, the existing judicial review bid was filed when the convening authority dismissed Zaidi’s dissolution request without giving any reason or giving the right to be heard.

When asked why he was not present during the military court’s delivery of its verdict, Hanipa cited lack of faith in the panel’s impartiality while also claiming that its independence was severely “compromised”.

“There’s no point. How to appear before a tainted judiciary? We don’t believe in the impartiality of the court... so how are we supposed to appear before it?” said the lawyer, who is also Sepang MP for PAS.

Hanipa said he was disallowed from presenting his arguments of “mistrial” in the military court last year, saying that this violated his client’s “fundamental right” to fair trial.

According to Hanipa, the presiding officer alleged to have make a biased online comment against Zaidi had never rebutted the evidence presented, saying: “Under the law, if you don’t rebut, that’s true.”

Hanipa confirmed that Zaidi would not be seeking any appeal in the military courts, but would focus fully on the judicial review in the civil courts.