Fitnah II: Defective charges, material contradictions, & justice blocked

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On May 12, 2010

It’s incredible what the prosecution keeps trying to pull in Fitnah II.

The issue being raised in court today and yesterday concerns – at its core – whether or not the alleged sodomy was consensual, as the prosecution charges.

By Nat Tan

All of Saiful’s testimony thus far states that he was apparently forced into sex, which is inconsistent with what the prosecution is charging.

Why is this important?

Under a (working) legal system, if any element of a prosecution’s charge is found to be untrue, the whole charge is dismissed, and the accused is innocent under the law.

What this means is that if the prosecution’s charge that Saiful and Anwar had consensual sex is inaccurate and inconsistent with Saiful’s testimony, then technically the whole charge should be dismissed.

For this reason, the defence applied to examine Saiful’s original statement to the police. Of course, the judge:

“Although there is material contradiction in the police report and the witness testimony, the witness’s statement is not in conflict over the incident (of sodomy). Based on this reasons, Karpal’s application is dismissed,” says Mohamad Zabidin.

In Malaysia of course, a material contradiction between a police report and witness testimony is no big deal in the pursuit of justice ala 1Malaysia 😛

One has to ask the question: why did the prosecution decide to charge Anwar for consensual sodomy, assuming they knew full well what Saiful’s testimony would be?

June opined that it is because the burden of proof for consensual sodomy is lower – ie, it would be harder for them to prove (for obvious reasons) that Anwar raped Saiful, and easier (through DNA planting, for instance) to ‘prove’ that they just had sex.

Of course, in their blind pursuit of this conviction, they ignored the fact that their charge was not consistent with what Saiful had actually said. The facts are unimportant to a prosecution hellbent on a conviction at any costs.