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Anwar accuser 'not raped'
04/09/2008 12:02 - (SA)
Kuala Lumpur - There is no evidence to back the alleged rape of a man who accused Malaysia's opposition leader of sodomy, a doctor who examined Anwar Ibrahim's accuser said on Thursday.
Mohamed Osman Abdul Hamid spoke in public for the first time since internet news portals leaked a medical report in which he wrote that he discovered no signs that Anwar's 23-year-old former aide had been sodomised.
Mohamed Osman said the purported statement by him was "correct". He claimed he had gone on leave away from Malaysia because "there was a lot of pressure" on him.
"Please be assured that I had merely done my job as a doctor," Mohamed Osman told a news conference. "I am not involved in politics. I will always tell the truth."
Anwar, who has pledged to seize power from Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's administration by mid-September, was charged in court last month with allegedly sodomising Saiful Bukhari Azlan.
Anwar has said Mohamed Osman's findings proved the accusation was false, though hospital authorities have claimed that the doctor was not qualified to make any conclusions on sodomy.
Mohamed Osman examined Saiful at a private hospital on June 28, two days after Saiful claimed the incident occurred. Independent news websites later published his medical report, followed by what appeared to be a statement by the doctor affirming the contents of the report.
Mohamed Osman said he did not know how the medical report leaked, stressing that he respected his patients' confidentiality and had "never at any time breached my professional ethics".
Mohamed Osman said in his previous statement that he advised Saiful to go to a government hospital for a second examination. It is not clear what transpired there, but Saiful went to a police station and filed a complaint against Anwar the same day.
It was the second sodomy accusation in a decade for Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was ousted in 1998 amid charges that he sodomised his family driver and abused his power to cover up his actions. He denied those charges but was imprisoned until Malaysia's highest court overturned the sodomy conviction in 2004.
Despite battling the latest charge, Anwar re-entered Parliament last month through a landslide victory in a by-election. He has vowed to topple the ruling coalition by September 16 by luring government lawmakers to defect to his three-party opposition alliance.
Anwar faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sodomy, a crime in this Muslim-majority nation. He claims the charge is part of a conspiracy against him after the opposition prevented the government from retaining its two-thirds parliamentary majority in March general elections.
- AP
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