PKR has welcomed the decision by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to send an international observer to the Federal Court on February 10 to observe the outcome of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s final appeal against the sodomy II conviction.

 

“IPU’s decision was made at a meeting by its committee of human rights on parliamentarians held just two days ago after reviewing Anwar Ibrahim’s case.

 

“The IPU after reviewing the facts, had noted that the sodomy charges has ‘been widely criticised as a bid to derail his (Anwar’s) political career’,” said PKR international bureau chief Gooi Hsiao Leung in a statement today.

 

The Alor Setar MP ( right ) added the international body had raised “serious concerns” over the “rushed manner” in which the case at the previous conviction at the Court of Appeal and the “apparent ease with which the main arguments presented by the defence, in particular concerning the integrity of the DNA samples, were dismissed”.

 

IPU, said Gooi, also questioned why the same sodomy law, although never or rarely invoked in Malaysia, has been invoked twice against Anwar Ibrahim.

 

Anwar had been charged under Section 377 of the Penal Code that criminalises sodomy, an archaic law inherited from the colonial British.

 

Gooi said the world body also questioned the persecution of Anwar’s lawyer N Surendran using the Sedition Act 1948 for statements related to the case.

 

”PKR greatly appreciates the deep concerns shown by the IPU on the outcome of Anwar’s case, especially on the future of the opposition in this country in the event Anwar’s conviction is upheld, and IPU’s decision to send an international observer to closely monitor Anwar’s case,” said Gooi.

 

Anwar was initially acquitted by the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Jan 2012 after Justice Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah found it unsafe to convict following the possibility of the samples retrieved from Saiful being contaminated.

However, a few days before he was scheduled to contest in the Kajang by-election last January, Anwar was unanimously found guilty by the Court of Appeal in a speedy appeal conducted in just two days.

 

Anwar’s appeal at the Federal Court in November - in contrast - took several weeks, and there had been no sign of a verdict until now.