Anwar to file fresh application to expunge remarks

PETALING JAYA: PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will file a fresh application to expunge unwarranted remarks made against him in the 2004 Federal Court's judgment in acquitting him of sodomy charges.
In a statement to the press today, PKR vice-president N. Surendran said that the decision read out on Wednesday by Chief Judge Zulkefli Makinuddin was "perverse, without basis and completely against the facts of the case and the law".
According to Surendran, Justice Zulkefli should have confined himself to Anwar's original application to expunge remarks made nine years ago that had implied he (Anwar) has homosexual tendencies.
He added that the court had gone further in making unwarranted remarks against Anwar as "the court reinforced and interpreted the judgment in a way prejudicial to him".
"They should have confined themselves to the expungement application (as) they had no powers to re-evaluate or approve of the remarks made in the 2004 judgment," he added.
The then Federal Court judge Justice Abdul Hamid Mohamad had in a 2-1 Federal Court majority decision on Sept 2, 2004, freed Anwar on a charge of having sodomised his family's driver, Azizan Abu Bakar, at the Tivoli Villa in Kuala Lumpur in 1994.