Youth and Sports Minister and Umno Youth chief, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar, today won his appeal to put Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy II conviction as part of his statement of defence.

This follows the decision of the Court of Appeal's three-member bench which allowed the appeal, and ordered that the case be heard before another High Court judge.

The appellate court also ordered Anwar to pay costs of RM15,000.

The bench was headed by Court of Appeal judge Zakaria Sam; the other two judges are Justice Abdul Rahman Sebli and Justice Zamani A Rahim.

Ironically, Justice Abdul Rahman and Justice Zamani were in another panel which heard and dismissed an appeal by Utusan Malaysia to include similar matters regarding Anwar's conviction in Sodomy II to reduce the quantum of damages the newspaper had to pay for defaming Anwar.

Today's decision was revealed to Malaysiakini by lawyer J Leela for Anwar. Khairy was represented by Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.

The additions to the defence statement does not only include Anwar's Sodomy II conviction but also other matters, including the ‘Kajang move’.

The ‘Kajang move’ is a political tactic by PKR to replace former Selangor menteri besar Khalid Ibrahim with its president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, through a by-election engineered to subsequently install Anwar as menteri besar.

Anwar, who was formerly opposition leader and Permatang Pauh MP, filed the suit eight years ago following allegations that Khairy had uttered defamatory words about him at a ceramah in Lembah Pantai on Feb 20, 2008.

Anwar claimed the video clips of the speech carried by news portal Malaysiakini.com contained the defamatory words.

It was previously reported that Judicial Commissioner S Nantha Balan had ordered that parties go for mediation to settle the matter which had dragged on for eight years. However, mediation efforts failed last month.