A Malaysian judge rejected opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s bid to force the man who accused him of sodomy to testify whether he had an affair with a female prosecutor in the continuing trial.
The hearings have been on hold since an opposition-linked activist claimed last month that Farah Azlina Latif, a young attorney for the prosecution, had a recent affair with Saiful Bukhari Azlan, Anwar’s 25-year-old male former aide. Neither Saiful nor Farah has directly responded to the allegation.
Anwar faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sodomizing Saiful. He insists the government fabricated the charge in 2008 to sideline him after his opposition alliance made unprecedented electoral gains. Government authorities deny conspiring against Anwar.
Anwar’s top lawyer, Karpal Singh, urged Malaysia’s High Court yesterday to make both Saiful and Farah testify about the alleged affair.
The defense team claims Farah might have leaked confidential information to Saiful, who should not have access to prosecution strategies.
“Without their evidence, the court will not be able to elicit the truth,” Singh said. “The integrity and partiality of this entire trial is in question.”
High Court Judge Mohamad Zabidin Diah dismissed the application, saying it was “not relevant.”
Prosecution lawyers argued that Farah had been a junior member of the team and never had important documents in her possession.
Malaysia’s attorney general ordered Farah removed from the case last month. He said although there was no proof to support the claim of an affair, the move would protect the prosecution’s credibility.
This is the second time Anwar has been accused of sodomy, a crime in the country. He was imprisoned for six years starting in 1998 for sodomy and corruption.
The sodomy conviction was later overturned.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing