KUALA LUMPUR, March 7 — Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy conviction today following the government’s appeal will likely cut short the opposition leader’s political career, a rights group and lawmakers from the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) said today.
Phil Robertson, the deputy director of the Human Rights Watch’s Asian division, described the Court of Appeal decision as “truly a dark day for the Malaysia judiciary”.
“This trial was all about knocking Anwar Ibrahim out of politics and the government was prepared to do whatever it took to make that happen.
“Anwar and his family appear caught in a never-ending nightmare of his political adversaries’ making, with the courts as the instrument of his political execution,” Robertson said in a brief statement today.
Robertson further said the alleged sodomy offence that Anwar was charged with committing in 2008 “should never have been considered a crime in the first place”, although he noted that debates on the matter will put Malaysia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community in “political cross-hairs for harassment and intimidation.”
When contacted, DAP publicity secretary Tony Pua claimed that the entire court proceedings of the two-day appeal was staged.
Pua noted that the appellate court judges were “unusually aggressive” in the case, saying that the dates for the hearing of the government’s appeal against Anwar’s acquittal was “suddenly brought forward for no apparent reason”.
Calling today’s decision that found Anwar guilty of sodomy a “fallacy of justice”, Pua acknowledged that it could likely affect the PKR leader’s candidancy in the Kajang by-election just slightly over two weeks away.
“It is a decision solely for the purpose of barring Datuk Seri Anwar from taking up position in Selangor,” the Petaling Jaya Utara MP told The Malay Mail Online, but said the legal impact of the ruling was still under study.
Pua also said today’s decision “completely shattered the independence” of the judiciary, which he claimed has “proven itself a tool of Najib’s administration”.
PKR vice-president N. Surendran said in a brief text message that the court ruling was “a disgrace to justice”.
Anwar was today sentenced to five years’ jail after the appellate court overturned his previous acquittal of sodomy by the Kuala Lumpur High Court.
He was later granted a stay of execution until Monday morning and a bail of RM10,000.
A three-man bench unanimously decided that High Court Datuk Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah wrongly concluded that investigating officer Jude Blacious Pereira may have compromised DNA samples submitted as evidence when he opened a sealed bag in which they were kept.
On January 9, 2012, Anwar had been acquitted of allegedly sodomising Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan at the Desa Damansara condominium on June 26, 2008.
The former deputy prime minister and finance minister was first charged with sodomy and corruption in 1998 after he was sacked from the cabinet. He was convicted and jailed for both offences but the sodomy charge was overturned.
Anwar was freed in September 2004 after spending six years in jail and later resurrected his political career by winning back his Permatang Pauh parliamentary seat in a by-election in 2008.
