It seems that not everyone has entirely read the Federal Court's 88-page judgment acquitting Anwar Ibrahim on Sept 2. Some people might only have been interested in the summary at the end of the judgment.

Allow me to refer to the beginning of this aforesaid summary:

'To summarise our judgment, even though reading the appeal record, we find evidence to confirm that the appellants were involved in homosexual activities and we are more inclined to believe that the alleged incident at Tivoli Villa did happen, sometime, ...'

With reference to the above, some might have only read, 'We find evidence to confirm..." ignoring the word before which are '... even though reading the appeal record ...'.

What we should understand is that the judges mentioned that they found evidence and they are more inclined to believe the sodomy incident did happen, only after reading the appeal record. Please remember that Anwar was found guilty by the High Court and Court of Appeal. The two Federal Court judges also mentioned that:

'In this judgment, we shall first consider whether the trial judge had correctly, in law and on the facts, called for the defence. If he had not, it would not be necessary for us to consider the defence: the appellants are entitled to an acquittal.

'Only, if we find that the learned trial judge had correctly called for the defence that we will have to consider whether he had correctly convicted the appellants at the close of the case for the defence.'

This shows that the Federal Court's first task was to decide in the first place whether the appellants should have been called for their defence or were entitled to an acquittal. And finally they found that the High Court had misdirected itself in calling the appellants' defence when they should have been acquitted.

The Federal Court judges did not, at any moment, find Anwar guilty of sodomy as they did not even consider his defense, an unnecessary step. They released Anwar and Sukma because the prosecution did not prove the case against them beyond a reasonable doubt.