Malaysian Court Upholds Opposition Leader’s Sodomy Conviction

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia — A Malaysian court on Tuesday upheld a sodomy conviction for Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the country’s opposition, the culmination of a protracted legal battle entwined with a high-stakes struggle for political supremacy.

A lower court had sentenced Mr. Anwar to five years in prison on the charge last year, and the Federal Court here in the country’s administrative capital was hearing arguments Tuesday on prosecutors’ request for a longer sentence. Sodomy is punishable by up to 20 years, and the court’s rejection of Mr. Anwar’s final appeal was likely to remove him as the linchpin of a fractious but ascendant opposition less than two years after the government was nearly toppled in a general election.

The governing party, which has presided over Malaysia since it attained independence from Britain in 1957, has long employed mildly authoritarian tactics to stay in power. In recent months, using an archaic sedition law, prosecutors have filed a raft of cases against government critics, including opposition figures, a professor and a cartoonist.

Christopher Leong, president of the Malaysian Bar, said moving up the trial date and the unusually swift sentencing had led to a “perception that justice may have been hijacked.”

Mr. Anwar, a former deputy prime minister in the governing party, was ousted from power in 1998. His jailing would leave the opposition, which attracts supporters as varied as rural Islamic conservatives and ethnic Chinese city dwellers, without a clear unifying figure.

The New York Times