|
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was arrested
Wednesday just as he was due to face police interrogation over
allegations he sodomized a male aide, his lawyer and police said.
Anwar’s wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said she
feared for his safety, after the events of a decade ago when he was
sacked as deputy premier, beaten up by the police chief, and
convicted on sodomy and corruption charges.
“My concern is for my husband’s safety, and
we want access to see him,” said Wan Azizah, a parliamentarian
whose Keadilan party leads a three-member opposition alliance.
“I feel apprehensive because my husband is 10
years down the road, he is not that well, he has a bad back, he’s
had surgery and from a brief conversation, he said they were not
gentle,” she said.
Anwar’s lawyer Sankara Nair said he witnessed
the arrest at the gates of the opposition leader’s home, while he
was en route between a meeting with anti-corruption officials and a
scheduled interview with police.
“He had just arrived home when about 10
officers detained him at the gate of his home,” he told Agence
France-Presse.
Sodomy, even between consenting adults, is
illegal in predominantly Muslim Malaysia and carries a penalty of up
to 20 years imprisonment.
The charges threaten to derail Anwar’s
political comeback, and his plans to oust the government with the
help of defecting lawmakers, after landmark March elections that
handed the opposition unprecedented gains.
Anwar was in the Philippines in early June for a
private visit with former Presidents Joseph Estrada and Corazon
Aquino. In a speech at De La Salle University, Anwar called on
Malaysia to rejoin the International Monitoring Team that is keeping
eye on a truce between the Philippine government and the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front.
Erap worried for Anwar
On Wednesday, Estrada said the arrest of Anwar
was “politically motivated.”
“This appears to be a repeat of what they did
in 1998 when they jailed Anwar for sodomy at the height of the
protests against then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and released
him six years later because he was not guilty,” Estrada was quoted
by his spokesman Margaux Salcedo as saying.
-- AFP with Francis Earl A. Cueto
|
