(April 8): Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar, plans to include Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy conviction in another amendment in his defence, against the latter’s RM100 million defamation suit.

Anwar's lawyer J.Leela told reporters that Khairy's counsel Sarah Abishegam had informed the judicial commissioner, S. Nanthabalan in chambers today, that they would apply to amend the defence to include Anwar’s February 10 conviction for sodomy.

"We will very likely object if such an application is made to include Anwar's conviction," she said. Nanthabalan has fixed a trial on May 25.

A five-man Federal Court bench had dismissed Anwar’s appeal against his conviction for having carnal intercourse with his former aide, Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan, at a condominium in Damansara in 2008.

The Federal Court also maintained the five-year jail term meted out by the Appeals Court on Anwar. Anwar is now serving the sentence in the Sungai Buloh prison.

On Monday, the Federal Court allowed Khairy to amend his defence to show that Anwar has homosexual tendencies, in response to the opposition leader's suit filed in 2008.

A five-man bench chaired by Tan Sri Raus Sharif said the defence of partial justification was 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 gave Anwar 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 had found enough evidence that Anwar was involved in homosexual activities.

“Instead of saying you are homosexual, we are saying the Federal Court said you are homosexual,” Khairy's lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told reporters outside court.

On August 20 last year, the Court of Appeal dismissed Khairy's appeal to amend his defence. Anwar had 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 at Lembah Pantai on or around February 20, 2008.

In 2004, then Federal Court judge Tun Abdul Hamid Mohamad, who later became chief justice, had in a majority ruling to acquit Anwar of sodomising his wife's driver, Azizan Abu Bakar, at the Tivoli Villa in Kuala Lumpur in 1994.

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