KUALA LUMPUR, March 24 — The High Court here today set March 27 as the date to hear jailed Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s application for a judicial review against the decision to bar him from attending Parliament, according to Star Online.
Anwar filed the application through his lawyer N. Surendran on March 18 seeking for the courts to override the Prison Commissioner’s rejection of his request to attend Parliament on March 4.
Surendran had then said that the filing of the judicial review is “unprecedented” as there has never been an instance where an MP was barred from attending Parliament.
On February 10, the Federal Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s 2014 ruling that had reversed Anwar’s acquittal of sodomising former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, also sentencing him to five years’ jail.
On February 24, Anwar’s family sent a request for a royal pardon to delay his disqualification from his Permatang Pauh seat. They also applied to the prison to temporarily release the opposition leader to attend Parliament.
However, they received a letter on March 4 from the Prisons Department rejecting their application.
