What's behind Anwar's trial?

Police remove Anwar supporter Tien Chua

By Jonathan Fryer

Lawyers defending former Malayasian Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, have declared themselves "shocked and flabbergasted" by his conviction on charges of sodomy.

Anwar Ibrahim says he was framed

The judge sentenced him to nine years, which he will serve after he completes a current six-year sentence relating to an earlier conviction for abuse of power.

Although sodomy between men has been decriminalised in most of the West, it is still highly stigmatised in much of the Islamic world and Africa, from Iran to Zimbabwe.

In Malaysia, the offence carries a maximum penalty of 20 years.

At first glance, the judge's sentence of nine years in Anwar Ibrahim's case might therefore appear to be relatively lenient.

Security was tight for the verdict

Yet in the view of many of Mr Anwar's supporters - including his wife, who has stood loyally by him - the outcome of the trial is monstrous, as they believe the charges of sexual relations with a driver were a complete fabrication.

The man who was alleged to have been sodomised changed his story a number of times during the trial.

And Mr Anwar was very hopeful that the judge would come down on his side because of the inconsistencies that many people pointed out throughout the trial.

Theft

But it would seem the judge - who indeed made it clear he felt the prosecution had done a good job, and that the evidence was firmly weighted against the defendant - didn't believe Mr Anwar.

Prime Minister Mahathir seems to have won another battle

The trial dragged on for many months and Mr Anwar's lawyer Pawanchek Marakhan said they were subjected to all kinds of harassment and dirty tricks.

"My office was broken into; my safe was smashed," he says.

"Many of us felt threatened. Some of us lost our laptops along the way. And somebody tampered with the brakes of one lawyer's car."

Defiant

When Mr Anwar was first arrested in late 1998 he suffered a beating by police.

But he has remained defiant in his court appearances, repeatedly asserting his innocence.

"I will continue to fight against the charges framed against me; in the name of justice, I will continue to fight!" he says.

Mr Anwar had at one time been heir apparent to Malaysia's long-serving Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, but he fell from grace in the leader's eyes.

And in the view of Mr Anwar's supporters, everything that has happened since has been political, not judicial.

"Because it is a politicised trial, it won't be solved by the courts," says Mr Marakhan.

"It will have to be solved out there among politicians, and with the populace.

"And I think that because of the age of our leader [Dr Mahathir] - the number one leader now - and because there has been crisis after crisis of people leaving the government, that's going to be the problem now."

Apathy

Last year, when the corruption trial against Mr Anwar was going on, there were large-scale, noisy demonstrations in his support.

This time, the Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur was ringed by hundreds of armed police, but there was little protest.

It was almost as if people were suffering from "Anwar fatigue", as the case has gone on for so long.

Moreover, despite all the political turmoil last year, Dr Mahathir still had a comfortable victory in general elections at the end of the year.

Now, with the verdict in the sodomy trial, Dr Mahathir seems to have won another decisive battle.

What is more, as the new sentence will be served consecutively after Mr Anwar's jail term for his conviction for abuse of power, he has effectively been removed from the political scene in Malaysia for the foreseeable future.

Mr Anwar's supporters say that that was the very point of the whole prosecution and conspiracy: to remove a potential threat to Dr Mahathir and to remove a staunch critic of the government.

Mr Anwar's wife has herself adopted a political profile since his imprisonment, and has good contacts with liberal forces in many parts of the world.

But any protests from abroad about how the whole Anwar affair has been handled are likely to be defiantly dismissed by the present Malaysian Government.