Encik Anwar, please bend over

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Jun 8, 2010

Who is bending over – Anwar or the criminal justice system?

It has been almost 12 years since Anwar Ibrahim, newly sacked as deputy prime minister, was first charged with trumped-up charges of sodomy and corruption, and subsequently put through two trials which were condemned around the world as manifestly flawed and politically motivated.

He spent six years in detention, in solitary confinement throughout, after his conviction on the corruption charge. Later at the final appeal against the sodomy conviction, he was acquitted and released on 2 September 2004.

Now, with Anwar once more poised to lead the opposition coalition into the next general elections – with good prospects of taking over the reins of government, the nightmare is starting all over again.

On 16 July 2008, Anwar, then 61 years old, was arrested on a new charge of sodomy, after a police report was lodged by Saiful Bukhari, a 23 year-old junior aide in his office alleging several incidents of sodomy without consent.

It is clear that the charge of consensual sodomy (why not without consent as in the police report?) is, again, politically motivated, a renewed attempt to sabotage the opposition and Anwar’s leadership, both of which were revived dramatically since the 8 March 2008 general elections.

Otherwise, how else can you explain the accusation that a warga emas with a well known serious back problem can forcefully sodomise a young man – not once but several times!

The new case – its facts and the way it is being conducted – looks alarmingly like the earlier ones. In the earlier cases, they were marked by:

i) political interference;

ii) falsification of evidence;

iii) blackmailing of prosecution witnesses as well as several of Anwar’s close friends and associates;

iv) harassment of defence lawyers and also several civil servants who did not speak, report or act according to the recommended script;

v) the court’s rejection of documents, and refusal to allow witness testimony, which was favourable to the accused; and

a string of unfair or questionable rulings and decisions by the judges both during the course of the trial and in the ultimate judgment of the cases, which often put a premature end to the defence counsel’s line of questioning.

In the present case, the alleged victim is known to have had contact (and in fact testified in court) with senior police officers and high-level UMNO politicians, including the Prime Minister and his lovely first lady, before he made his police report against Anwar.

Ominously, the main members of the prosecution team were all involved in the earlier cases, which involved fabrication of evidence and suppression of evidence favourable to the defendant, but an application to disqualify this tainted prosecution team met with failure.

Anwar’s defence team, despite appealing right to the Federal Court, has also been denied several important documents to help them mount an effective defence, and there are unmistakable signs of wrongful cooperation between the police, the AG’s Chambers and the judiciary.

The new case is being pursued despite the absence of evidence, most crucially that all four doctors, including three specialists, who examined the alleged victim, reported that there was no evidence of penetration:

No conclusive clinical findings suggestive of penetration to the anus/rectum and no significant defensive wound on the body of the patient – Kuala Lumpur General Hospital report, 28 June, 2008.

But lo and behold! One of the doctors, Dr. Mohd Razali Ibrahim has now testified that because there was presence of semen in the swabs taken, therefore there is now penetration!

Hallelujah! A miracle unseen since more than 2,000 years ago! Hallelujah!