Malaysia’s top court has upheld opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s conviction for sodomy.<\/p>\n
Mr Anwar was accused of having sex with a male aide in 2008. Sodomy is illegal in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but very few people are ever prosecuted.<\/p>\n
The popular politician was sentenced to five years in jail in March 2014 after an earlier acquittal was overturned – a ruling against which he appealed.<\/p>\n
He says the case is a bid by the ruling coalition to block him from politics.<\/p>\n
Mr Anwar – who heads a three-party alliance – is widely seen as the only man who can break the governing coalition’s dominance, correspondents say.<\/p>\n
The Barisan Nasional has been in power since 1957, but suffered its worst-ever result in the most recent elections in May 2013.<\/p>\n
‘Political decision’<\/span><\/p>\n Ahead of the verdict, Mr Anwar, 67, said there was “no reason whatsoever for them to ever consider putting me to jail”.<\/p>\n “I am innocent,” he said. “Now in the event there’s a political decision to put me in jail, I understand the system, I’ve served time in prison… But then this is a price I have to pay.”<\/p>\n In 2008, Mr Anwar was accused of having sex with a male political aide. He was cleared by a High Court of the charges in 2012 because of a lack of evidence.<\/p>\n The government then appealed against his acquittal and it was overturned by the court. It is Mr Anwar’s appeal against this ruling that has now been rejected.<\/p>\n This is the opposition leader’s second sodomy conviction since he was sacked from the Barisan Nasional government in 1998. His previous conviction, from 2000, was overturned.<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch condemned what it described as the “selective persecution” of Mr Anwar.<\/p>\n “PM Najib’s government wants to push him off the political process,” Reuters news agency quoted Phil Robertson, the group’s deputy director for Asia, as saying.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Malaysia’s top court has upheld opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s conviction for sodomy. Mr Anwar was accused of having sex with a male aide in 2008. Sodomy is illegal in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but very few people are ever prosecuted. The popular politician was sentenced to five years in jail in March 2014 after an earlier acquittal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-90165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}