Malaysian opposition leader arrested: an act of political desperation

The manner in which the arrest was carried out was highly provocative. More than a dozen police, including commandos in balaclavas, blocked off the street outside Anwars home, dragged him from his car and took him off to police headquarters. According to his lawyer Sankara Nair, police gave no reason for the arrest. Nair also pointed out that Anwar had already agreed to present himself to the police for questioning at 2 p.m. The arrest took place an hour earlier, at 1 p.m.

The arrest was a virtual re-run of Anwars arrest in 1998 when, amid mounting opposition protests against the government, he was detained, assaulted by the countrys police chief and then tried and convicted on bogus charges of corruption and sodomy. The Malaysian Federal Court eventually overturned the sodomy charge in 2004, acknowledging the original conviction was based on unreliable evidence.

A decade later, Anwar again finds himself facing accusations of sodomy by a former aide, Mohammed Saiful Bukhari Azian. Anwar has insisted that the allegations are malicious fabrications designed to sabotage the opposition campaign and prevent his entry to parliament via a by-election. He had been banned from parliament until this year as a result of his corruption conviction. Senior officials of his Peoples Justice Party (Keadilan) allege that Saiful was planted by the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UNMO) and claim to have pictures showing him with leading government figures.

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