This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 11, 2015.

KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim cannot receive medical treatment abroad as the law does not allow inmates to do so, said the Prisons Department.

Supri Hashim, the department’s deputy director in charge of prison policy, told Utusan Malaysia that Section 37(1) of the Prisons Act 1995 clearly states that a prisoner can only be treated in government hospitals, and not private hospitals, let alone overseas.

“In this matter, when a prisoner has a serious ailment and the prison authorities do not have the facilities to treat him, senior prison officials can send him to a government hospital with a recommendation by a medical officer.

“This has been [the] standard procedure for all prisoners,” Supri said in a statement reported by Utusan Malaysia.

There are some 47,000 prisoners in Malaysian prisons.

Supri was responding to claims by the former opposition leader’s family that Putrajaya is not providing adequate medical treatment to the de facto PKR leader, and is preventing him from going abroad for surgery.

Anwar has irregular blood pressure, a growth in the kidney, gastritis, arthritis and a shoulder muscle tear.

He has been in prison since February to serve a five-year sentence for sodomy, a charge which he and the opposition say was aimed at ending his political career.

His family said they no longer trust the treatment given to him in Malaysia, saying Anwar was also denied physiotherapy. — The Malaysian Insider