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Anwar arrest outrages resurgent opposition
Associated Press - July 17, 2008
Within hours of his arrest by police yesterday the Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was believed to be undergoing a medical examination in hospital.
Police arrested Mr Anwar, 60, about an hour before he was expected at police headquarters to answer allegations of sodomising a male aide.
"We think that he's been taken for a medical examination but we're not sure," said Tian Chua, a spokesman for Mr Anwar's People's Justice Party, which leads a three-member opposition alliance.
"I don't think this is necessary. If you need a DNA swab you can do it up there [in police headquarters], you don't need to take a man to hospital for a DNA swab," he said.
The arrest was expected to worsen divisions and tensions that have run high since the opposition made unprecedented gains in the March general elections, eroding the ruling coalition's strength in Parliament.
Mr Anwar has denied the sodomy accusation – made in a police complaint by the young aide in late June – and called it a political conspiracy to snuff out his campaign to seize power by September.
About a dozen policemen, some of them wearing balaclavas, cordoned off the road leading to Mr Anwar's house and stopped his car, said his lawyer, Sankara Nair. The policemen informed Mr Anwar that they had orders to arrest him but gave no reason, he said.
Mr Anwar was bundled into a police car with tinted windows and driven to police headquarters where a crowd of opposition MPs, including his wife, Azizah Ismail, gathered outside without trouble or violence.
Ms Azizah said Mr Anwar called on her mobile phone after his arrest. "I feel apprehensive because my husband – is not that well. He has a bad back, he's had surgery. And [during our] brief conversation he said they [police] were not gentle," she said.
It was not clear why Mr Anwar was arrested a little before 1pm as he had said he would present himself for interrogation before the deadline of 2pm set by the police.
The vice-president of the People's Justice Party, Azmin Ali, called the arrest "outrageous and very uncivilised". "This is not a criminal case but a political case," he said.
Mr Anwar was arrested as he returned home from the administrative capital of Putrajaya, where he had told reporters he would go to the police headquarters at 2pm and "give my fullest co-operation".
The latest accusation of sodomy echoes one made against Mr Anwar in May 1998, when he was deputy prime minister and finance minister, which led to his dismissal from the government and subsequent conviction and imprisonment.
Malaysia's Supreme Court overturned the conviction after he had served six years in jail.
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