Susanna Liew hasn’t seen her husband, Malaysian pastor Raymond Koh, in eight years. She has spent the past five years in a legal battle over his abduction, which authorities failed to investigate thoroughly.
This week, Malaysia finally acknowledged what she had suspected all along. In a high court ruling issued Wednesday, a judge found sufficient evidence that the government and police played a role in Koh’s 2017 disappearance. The verdict granted Koh’s family a total of over 37 million Malaysian ringgit (RM; $8.8 million USD).
The outcome was “unbelievable,” Liew, 69, said, after years of advocating and rallying Christians on her husband’s behalf. “It’s like God-answered prayer … beyond what we can imagine or think, a reflection of God’s faithfulness to his servant.”
The high court concluded that Koh’s kidnappers acted in a “sophisticated manner” that suggested institutional involvement. The judge also ordered the state to reopen the investigation into Koh’s disappearance and report their progress to the attorney general every two months.
God’s presence was “so evident” during the trial, said Jerald Gomez, the family’s lawyer. “The police could not hide what they had done. Truly with God anything is possible.”
A report issued by the Human Rights Commission Malaysia (known as SUHAKAM) in 2019 similarly found that the 62-year-old pastor did not go voluntarily when his car was boxed in by three black SUVs and masked men hauled him into the back of a vehicle on February 13, 2017. The commission suggested that agents from the Special Branch in Kuala Lumpur, the intelligence and security agency of the Malaysian police, enforced the abduction.
That night, when Koh didn’t show up for a meeting, Liew panicked and went to the police to file a missing person report. Instead, officers interrogated her for five hours about Koh’s ministry activities and whether he proselytized Muslims.
Since then, Liew has fought for truth and justice in her husband’s case, including filing a lawsuit against police and the government in 2020. Though CCTV footage from nearby homes captured the abduction, the government “suppressed evidence, concealed information, and misdirected investigations.” Koh has not been seen since.
The night before the verdict, Liew couldn’t sleep. She felt overwhelmed when she saw around 100 people show up at the courtroom early—some she knew, and others were strangers who had been praying for the Kohs—in the gallery. Some even had to sit on the floor.
“I really felt surrounded by prayers of the saints,” Liew told CT.
At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Koh’s family got a glimpse of the justice they had been praying for. When the court ruled in Liew’s favor, people in the gallery applauded. The judge did not stop them.
The judge continued reading the verdict for two hours, including ordering the government and police to give the Koh family RM 10,000 a day ($2,400 USD) from the date of Koh’s abduction to the day he is found, amounting to more than RM 31 million ($7.6 million).
The money, which along with other damages totals $8.8 million, would be deposited into a trust fund for her husband because the judge does not consider Koh dead, Liew said.
“We are overjoyed and thankful to God that we have an honest and fair judgment,” Liew said, reading a statement to the press outside the court. “Though this will not bring pastor Raymond back, it is somewhat a vindication and closure for the family of pastor Raymond Koh.”
The Malaysian attorney general’s chamber announced plans to appeal the November 5 court verdict.
Liew hopes the ruling continues to exert pressure on officials to provide answers to Koh’s whereabouts. “Right now we don’t know anything—where he is, is he alive, is he dead?”
Koh, who came to faith at a Christian concert in Singapore in the 1970s, had a long ministry career in Muslim-majority Malaysia. The Evangelical Free Church pastor started the nongovernmental organization Harapan Komuniti to shelter people with HIV, support single mothers, and meet the needs of the most vulnerable.
Prior to his abduction, the country’s Islamic authorities had investigated Harapan Komuniti for attempting to convert Muslims, which is illegal. Although the government dropped the allegations, Koh bore the weight of the accusations and even received two bullets in the mail.
Koh was experiencing a “spiritual awakening” in the days before he was abducted, Liew said in a recent Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) USA interview. He took prayer walks around the neighborhood and seemed to be filled with an urgency to share the gospel, she said.
When their three children were younger, the Kohs talked with them about the risks of their father being arrested or jailed. The family prayed and cried together, which “prepared us for any eventuality,” Liew told VOM.
Tan Soo-Inn, a Malaysian-born preacher in Singapore, met Koh when he was a pastor in Penang in the ’80s. When he heard the news of Liew’s victory in court, Tan didn’t give himself permission to rejoice initially. “The news looked too good to be true,” he said.
But as reality sank in, he thanked God for his mercy and answered prayers. He thought of Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”
Some may criticize the Malaysian court for awarding an excessive amount of money to the Kohs, Tan said. But he found the judge’s verdict crucial because it called out the government and police’s failure in Koh’s kidnapping. “It is hard to believe that no one knows what happened to Pastor Raymond,” he said.
The family has sought to forgive the perpetrators of Koh’s abduction. Liew bought a fruit basket for the person who allegedly led the operation to kidnap her husband when she learned that he was in hospital recovering from liver cancer, she revealed in the VOM USA interview.
“In my heart I felt peace because I obeyed the Lord. I have done what God asked me to do,” she said. “I have forgiven even my enemy.”
