KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 4 — The Court of Appeal rejected today a submission by Utusan Melayu (M) Bhd, the publisher of Umno-owned daily Utusan Malaysia, to use Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy conviction in appealing the latter’s defamation suit against it.

Utusan was seeking to amend its submission to include the recent sodomy conviction in evaluating his character and assessing the damages of the civil suit which the High Court had already ruled in favour of Anwar in January 2013.

The Court of Appeal also decided to uphold High Court judge Justice Hue Siew Kheng’s decision to deny the amendment.

Anwar’s lawyer N. Surendran said Utusan can no longer rely on the sodomy conviction to affect the decision on damages, and both parties  are now awaiting for an amount to be determined by the court.

“We are pleased that the court agreed with us, it was the correct decision.

“Right now it’s a question of damages,” he told Malay Mail Online when contacted.

He added that a case management for the appeal has been fixed for September 11.

The RM50 million defamation suit was filed by Anwar in January 2012 against Utusan for publishing in its Malay-language daily Utusan Malaysia, two articles on his comments to British news BBC during an interview on homosexuality laws.