Police opened an investigation yesterday into allegations that Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim sodomized his male aide, sparking fears he could be sent back to prison on the same charge that ousted him from government a decade ago.
Anwar immediately retreated to a secret location amid concerns for his safety and denounced the allegation — made in a police complaint filed by the 23-year-old aide — as “a complete fabrication.”
The dramatic developments that began to unfold a little before midnight on Saturday will have a severe impact on Malaysian politics, which have been in turmoil since March 8 elections handed the governing National Front coalition its worst-ever result.
PHOTO: AP
The 60-year-old Anwar resurrected his political career after leading the opposition to spectacular gains in those elections.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi insisted the government was not responsible for the accusation, saying there was no conspiracy “to cause [Anwar] trouble or harass him or raise such issues to undermine him.”
Asked about Anwar’s denial, Abdullah said it “was common for an accused person” to claim he was innocent.
Anwar said the accusation was engineered by “interested parties” to prevent him from exposing the national police chief, Musa Hassan, and Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail, for their alleged roles in having him accused of sodomizing his driver in 1998 and abusing his power to cover up the deed.
Those charges led to then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad firing Anwar as deputy prime minister. He was convicted on both charges, but Malaysia’s highest court overturned the sodomy conviction and freed him in 2004.
Anwar said he was framed to prevent him from challenging Mahathir for power. Anwar added he “recently obtained” evidence to show Musa and Abdul Gani fabricated evidence against him in 1998.
“I believe we are witnessing a repeat of the methods used against me in 1998 when false allegations were made under duress,” Anwar said in a statement early yesterday.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the