Source: blogywoodbabes.blogspot.com
Malaysian police issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in connection with a sodomy accusation by a male former aide, his lawyer said. Sodomy, even if consensual, is punishable by 20 years in prison in the largely Muslim country.
Counsel Sankara Nair said police told him Anwar was formally "a suspect" in the case and faxed him a letter asking the politician to appear at a police station for questioning before Wednesday at 2 p.m.
In this July 1, 2008 photo, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim gestures as he speaks in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysian police issued an arrest warrant for Anwar in connection with a sodomy accusation by a former male aide, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The sodomy accusation, made last month by a male aide, injected an unexpected twist to Malaysia's politics, which was already in turmoil. It helped slow down Anwar's campaign to topple the government, which suffered badly at the hands of his three-party People's Alliance in the March 8 general elections.
The ruling National Front coalition, which has traditionally enjoyed a two-thirds majority, now has only a 30-seat advantage over the opposition.
Anwar has said the allegations are meant to usurp his political gains.
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim says he has proof sodomy charges against him were fabricated.
"We are troubled by the threatening tone of the letter by the police," lawyer Sankara Nair told reporters outside Anwar's residence Tuesday.
A 23-year-old male aide has accused Anwar, 60, of sodomizing him at a luxury apartment in June.
Anwar has dismissed the sodomy allegation as a political conspiracy to prevent him from bringing down the government with parliamentary defections. He has yet to officially comment on the accusation.
"I am expecting him to be arrested tomorrow, but I don't discount him being arrested earlier," Nair told reporters.
Police Criminal Investigation Department chief Mohamad Bakri Zinin warned authorities will take "necessary action" if Anwar does not present himself for questioning before the deadline.
Anwar will abide by the police order and is prepared for the arrest, Nair said. He can be held in custody for up to 14 days, after which he must be charged. Sodomy is a non-bailable offense, punishable by up to 20 years in jail.
The arrest warrant comes ahead of Anwar's unprecedented live television debate later Tuesday with a Cabinet minister over the government's unpopular fuel price rises.
Anwar was similarly accused of sodomy a decade ago, leading to his ouster as deputy prime minister and subsequent prison sentence. Malaysia's Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, but by then Anwar had served six years in jail on a related corruption charge.
While Anwar was behind bars, his wife Azizah Ismail formed the opposition People's Justice Party, which joined hands with two other established parties - the religion-based Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and the ethnic Chinese-based Democratic Action Party - in the March elections.
Anwar's charisma and strategic skills were credited with boosting the combined opposition's strength in the 222-member Parliament from 19 to 82 seats.
A loose coalition of opposition parties -- with Anwar at the helm -- won 82 of 222 parliamentary seats in elections in March. It was the second time in the country's history that the ruling party failed to gain the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution.
When the allagation first broke last month Anwar Ibrahim sought refuge at the Turkish Embassy in Malaysia, from where he first denied the claim saying that the allegations of sodomy against him smacked of a replay of Malaysia’s political crisis a decade ago, and again involving a conspiracy at the highest levels of government.
Datuk Seri Anwar also told The Straits Times in a telephone interview that he would not leave the Turkish Embassy without a guarantee of his personal safety from Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.
Malaysia had objected to the Turkish embassy giving refuge to opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, accused of sodomy, and summoned the Turkish ambassador to ask him to explain what amounted to “meddling” in its internal affairs.
‘I am here because I fear for my safety, and I will leave only if (Prime Minister) Abdullah and the government can give me assurances and guarantees over my safety,’ he said.
He said he has been told of attempts to not just destroy his political career but also to assassinate him.
The decision by Mr Anwar to seek refuge at an embassy has been described by a South-east Asian diplomat as a ’shrewd tactical move’.
He has internationalized his political predicament, and that could limit the government’s response against his political campaign, analysts say.
Since being released from prison, he has forged a close relationship with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who heads a mildly Islamic party that rules the country.
Mr Anwar said conditions within the embassy walls were ‘good’. And from here, analysts say, he can continue to lead the campaign against Datuk Seri Abdullah’s government.
To clear his name, Ibrahim filed a lawsuit against his 23- year old male aide who accused him of sodomy, in the Kuala Lumpur High Court. Mr Anwar left the embassy after a meeting between Malaysia’s Foreign Minister, Rais Yatim, and Turkish ambassador Barlas Ozener.
He told the Associated Press he had made the decision to leave after the government had made “all the undertakings to assure his personal safety”. He began to raise the stakes in his fight with the government by lodging a police report today against its police chief and top lawyer for faking evidence against him in a similar case a decade ago.
Anwar claims he has proof that Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan and Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail concocted evidence for his corruption and sodomy trials in 1998 and 1999 which kept him imprisoned until he was freed in 2004.
The latest political drama has raised Malaysia’s political temperatures by several notches.
Analysts say it is likely to spook local and foreign investors already concerned about the country’s worsening political situation following the March general election.
Anwar was the heir apparent to former premier Mahathir Mohamad until 1998, when he was sacked and charged for corruption and sodomy.
Anwar said then, "I also have evidence on the fabrication and suppression of evidence in my 1999 trial involving the current inspector general of police and the attorney general." And because of that, the Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail has demanded an apology from the ex-Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia.
The sodomy conviction was overturned at the time, but the corruption verdict was never lifted, barring him from running for political posts until this year.
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The young man at the center of a political storm in Malaysia was known inside Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) as someone who had been ‘planted by the other side’, a senior party official claimed yesterday.
The name of Mr Saiful Bukhari Azlan was on the lips of many Malaysians after police said he had lodged a report that he had been sodomised by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Deputy Inspector-General of Police Ismail Omar on July 2 classified the crime charged as sodomy, based on a Kuala Lumpur Hospital medical report of anal sex upon the alleged victim, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 23, an aide. He was a student of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Tenaga Nasional. The incident allegedly took place at Desa Damansara condominiums, Damansara Heights.
Party officials say Mr Saiful joined PKR as a volunteer around the time of the March 8 general election, and was a former student of Universiti Tenaga Nasional.
PKR’s programme director, Mr Din Merican, writing in his blog yesterday, said: ‘My colleagues and I knew that he was planted by the other side. So we kept him under surveillance since the day he turned up in our office just before the March 2008 elections.
‘It was a matter of time, and we would have exposed him as someone with links to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister. He knew that the noose was tightening around his neck.’
Mr Din said Mr Saiful played a tiny role in PKR.
‘There was no security breach because he (Saiful) was not directly involved in the strategic activities of Parti Keadilan Rakyat. He was merely a coffee boy or a butler type.’
Internet chatrooms are abuzz about the man.
Many people zoomed in on a blog of his university friend, Mr Najwan Halimi, who had posted a picture of Mr Saiful and written about their chance encounter in February.
The blogger said Mr Saiful was deputy president of the students’ union for the 2006/2007 session.
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Anwar bin Ibrahim (born August 10, 1947 in Cherok Tok Kun, Penang, Malaysia) is a former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia. Early in his career, he became a protégé of the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, but subsequently emerged as the most prominent critic of Mahathir's administration.
In 1999, he was sentenced in a highly controversial trial to six years in prison for corruption, and in 2000, to another nine years for alleged homosexual acts. However, in 2004, Malaysia's highest court, the Federal Court reversed the second conviction and he was released.
Anwar is the only Malaysian to ever make it into Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. He is also one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding.
Cherok Tok Kun, a village on the mainland side of the northern Malaysian state of Penang, to a hospital porter, Ibrahim Abdul Rahman (later to join politics and retire as Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health) and Che Yan, a housewife (and later UMNO politician). He was educated at University of Malaya, where he read Malay Studies. Prior to that, he took his secondary education at the Malay College Kuala Kangsar.
From 1968 to 1971, as a student, Anwar was the president of a Muslim students organisation, Persatuan Kebangsaan Pelajar Islam Malaysia (PKPIM). He was one of the protem committee of Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) or Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia which was founded in 1971. He was also elected President of the Malaysian Youth Council or Majlis Belia Malaysia (MBM). In 1974, Anwar was arrested during student protests against rural poverty and hunger. He was imprisoned under the Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial, and spent twenty months in the Kamunting Detention Center for political prisoners.
