Friday 29 Mar 2024
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PUTRAJAYA: The Federal Court has allowed Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar to amend his defence to show that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has homosexual tendencies, in response to the opposition leader’s RM100 million defamation suit.

A five-man bench chaired by Tan Sri Md Raus Sharif said the defence of partial justification is allowed in defamation suits in Malaysia.

“We allow the appeal and the decision of the Court of Appeal is to be set aside.”

He also has given Anwar, represented by Datuk Sulaiman Abdullah, a month to reply after Khairy filed his amended defence.

“The ruling means that we are now able to rely on this as partial justification because the Federal Court in 2004 found enough evidence that Anwar was involved in homosexual activities.

“Instead of saying you (Anwar) are homosexual, we are saying the Federal Court says you are homosexual,” Khairy’s lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told reporters outside the court yesterday.

He said the defence could also rely on Anwar’s recent conviction by the Federal Court for sodomising his ex-aide Mohd Saiful Azlan Bukhari in 2008.

On Aug 20 last year, the Court of Appeal dismissed Khairy’s appeal to amend his defence.

Anwar filed the suit against Khairy on March 7, 2008, for uttering defamatory words and causing a video entitled “Anwar and kin no threat” to be posted on websites, including Malaysiakini.com.

The opposition leader also claimed that the video on Malaysiakini included parts of Khairy’s speech in Lembah Pantai on or around Feb 20, 2008.

Then Federal Court judge Tun Abdul Hamid Mohamad, who later became the Chief Justice, had in a majority ruling acquitted Anwar of sodomising his wife’s driver, Azizan Abu Bakar, at the Tivoli Villa in Kuala Lumpur in 1994.

However, Abdul Hamid, who was in the majority, remarked that the former deputy prime minister had homosexual tendencies, which Anwar failed to expunge last year. — The Malaysian Insider

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 7, 2015.

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