PUTRAJAYA, Nov 4 — In a stunning submission today, lead prosecutor Tan Sri Muhd Shafee Abdullah hypothesised that two intimate medical procedures performed on Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan in 2008 resulted in the presence of semen stains on the latter’s underpants that he claimed belonged to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The private lawyer leading the government team in Anwar's sodomy conviction appeal told a five-judge panel at the Federal Court that two separate proctoscopies performed on Mohd Saiful by doctors at the private Hospital Pusrawi and later by government doctors at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur, had likely dislodged some semen that had remained in the complainant's anus, causing it to fall and stain his underwear.
The underwear with the semen stain was the one worn by Saiful when he went for physical examinations at Hospital Pusrawi and Hospital Kuala Lumpur. It has been established that Saiful had worn a different pair of undergarments on the day of the alleged sodomy.
Shafee offered this as his theory to rebut the defence team's previous arguments on the presence of Anwar's semen stains allegedly swabbed from Mohd Saiful's underwear that had been tendered to court as evidence during the four-year-long marathon trial in the High Court.
The lead prosecutor had earlier today also argued that the doctor who first attended to Mohd Saiful at Hospital Pusrawi to be the most probable person to have left an unidentified DNA profile on the latter.
Earlier, the Federal Court had been told that apart from a DNA profile of a male contributor identified only as “Male Y”, there had been traces of at least one other male DNA contributor that had been picked up in the DNA tests swabbed from Mohd Saiful's anus.
Shafee argued that the contentious second DNA profile was likely due to contamination by Pusrawi's Dr Mohd Osman Abdul Hamid.
“Couldn't Dr Osman be the culprit who through negligence inserted his own DNA... Dr Osman was all over the anus of Saiful. Was he wearing gloves?” Shafee mused.
“I am not saying it is a possibility, it is in fact a serious probability,” he added.
The Federal Court is hearing today Anwar’s challenge of the Court of Appeal’s decision to overturn a lower court’s decision to acquit him of the charge.
The High Court had in 2012 acquitted Anwar of the 2008 charge but the appellate court ruled on March 7 this year that the trial judge had erred when rejecting the DNA evidence produced in the case.
Anwar has repeatedly maintained his innocence, insisting that the charges were trumped up to kill his political career as he allegedly poses a threat to the Barisan Nasional coalition's decades-long rule with the Pakatan Rakyat alliance, which he now leads.
If Anwar fails to reverse his five-year imprisonment sentence and conviction in the Federal Court, he would lose his seat as the law bars anyone fined RM2,000 or imprisoned for one year from serving as a lawmaker.
Today’s hearing is presided over by a five-member panel led by Chief Justice Tun Arifin Zakaria. Others include Court of Appeal president Tan Sri Md Raus Sharif and Federal Court judges Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Embong, Tan Sri Suriyadi Halim Omar and Datuk Ramly Ali.
Anwar is represented by a 14-man defence team led by Sri Ram. Others include lawyers R.Sivarasa, Latheefa Koya, N. Surendran and Gobind Singh Deo.
