KUALA LUMPUR, March 27 — The Special Appeals Court fixed March 31 to hear Umno-linked lawyer Tan Sri Shafee Abdullah’s application for an injunction against the Bar Council’s bid to discuss his conduct.

Shafee’s chief counsel, Kamarul Hisham Kamaruddin, said his team had filed for an inter parte injunction to set aside the respondents ex parte application that was filed and submitted yesterday.

“We have also filed our affidavit against all of the defendants’ affidavits,” he told reporters.

The matter was deliberated before Judge Datuk Asmabi Mohamad in chambers.

Shafee on March 13 secured an injunction from the Kuala Lumpur High Court prohibiting the Bar from deliberating on his allegedly questionable conduct as a lawyer following Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy conviction.

Shafee, a private lawyer, was authorised and appointed by the Attorney-General’s Chambers to head the government’s prosecution team against Anwar at the Federal Court.

In his ex-parte application, Shafee listed senior lawyer Tommy Thomas, former Court of Appeal judge Tan Sri VC George who has since returned to practice as a lawyer, the Malaysian Bar and its president Christopher Leong as respondents.

Tommy had proposed the motion to censure Shafee’s conduct, with the motion seconded by George.

Among other things, the motion claimed that Shafee had violated rules governing the legal profession, while also saying that his conduct was “morally reprehensible and legally unacceptable”.

The motion urged the Malaysian Bar to pass a resolution to condemn Shafee’s behaviour, lodge a complaint with the Disciplinary Board and to take further steps in order to prevent Shafee from “continuing to bring the legal profession into disrepute.”

Following Anwar’s conviction, Shafee participated in an Umno-organised roadshow and gave media interviews in which he continued to attack the federal opposition leader, notably including calling him a “closet homosexual” during one public forum.

On February 10, the Federal Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s conviction of Anwar for sodomising his former political aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, also retaining a five-year jail sentence.