PKR: Police tried to kill Anwar
By Shannon Teoh, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 — PKR has accused the police of attempting to murder Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim during the July 9 Bersih rally.
Party leaders said today that light strike force personnel had fired tear gas canisters into the tunnel the opposition leader and other Bersih supporters were marching through.
They claimed policemen had aimed to kill Anwar who was pulled back and protected by his bodyguard who took a canister directly to his face, shattering his cheekbone.
“They aimed directly at Anwar’s head and a direct hit from one of these canisters can kill. We want this case classified as attempted murder,” said vice president N. Surendran who accompanied the opposition leader’s bodyguard Fayyadh Afiq Albakqry to lodge a police report at the Dang Wangi headquarters today.
Fayyadh, accompanied by Surendran, Subang MP R. Sivarasa and other PKR lawyers had lodged the report today as he was only discharged from hospital yesterday.
He said he had five titanium plates inserted into his cheek after the incident where PKR says almost a dozen canisters were fired into the tunnel and three, including Fayyadh and PAS’s Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad were hit directly in the head.
“The amount of tear gas fired could also have caused the air in the tunnel to become lethal if those gathered were not able to get out,” Surendran added.
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders have also accused the police of “waging war” on those who gathered to call for free and fair elections, citing a Bar Council report claiming that police “had “arbitrarily, indiscriminately and excessively” fired from water cannons and launched tear gas canisters at close range and at eye-level at demonstrators.
