Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times by Barry Wain (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📕

ordered subordinates to blindfold and handcuff the prisoner. Rahim beat Anwar so viciously about the head and neck that a government forensic specialist said later he was lucky to survive. Two senior police officers dragged Rahim away from Anwar. With blood oozing from his nose and lips, Anwar lost consciousness until the following morning. He was not permitted to see a doctor for five days.

Although Anwar was told he was to be charged in court under the Penal Code the day after his arrest, Rahim announced that the former deputy premier was being held under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial. Dr. Mahathir said the police had to take Anwar in before they were ready to prefer charges because he was inciting violence, a reference to the clash the previous day between protesters and riot police firing tear gas and water canons. The advantage to the authorities in holding Anwar under the Internal Security Act, however, was that he was not permitted to make phone calls, consult a lawyer or have any contact at all with outsiders. Nobody except the police knew he had been beaten. Responding to expressions of concern over his disappearance, Rahim told the press after four days that Anwar was "safe and sound", when in reality he was injured and still being refused medical treatment.[62] The truth emerged on 29 September, nine days after his arrest, when Anwar appeared in court sporting the black eye that was to become infamous. Already shaky, the government's credibility all but evaporated.

Despite repeated denials, Dr. Mahathir was never able to shake the perception that he was complicit in the attack on Anwar, if, indeed, he had not actually ordered it. He did not help his cause by suggesting initially that Anwar's injuries might have been self-inflicted to gain sympathy. The announcement of an internal police inquiry, which Dr. Mahathir called "independent", was greeted cynically, justified when it took almost four months to confirm Anwar had been assaulted by police. Those responsible for the savagery remained unidentified, even after a former Anwar staffer in exile in Indonesia named Rahim as the culprit. While Rahim eventually confessed to a royal commission, belatedly established by the government as public pressure mounted, his lenient sentence of two months jail reinforced the widespread view that he had not acted alone. In Malaysia's feudal society — as John Funston, the political scientist, noted — no Malay could believe that the police chief would act without at least the expectation that he was doing his boss's bidding.[63]

Dr. Mahathir, who had said earlier he fired Anwar for moral misconduct and not because he feared a political challenge, explained to the press on 22 September why he believed in Anwar's guilt when he had not a year earlier. He said he had personally interviewed six of Anwar's accusers, "the people who were sodomized, the women whom he had sex with", with no police officers present. They had provided "incontrovertible proof" that the allegations were true, he said. Seeking to persuade a sceptical media, Dr. Mahathir read from Munawar Anees's statement to police, graphically describing — and miming buggery for television, as one disgusted critic noted[64] — what Anwar was alleged to have done while engaged in a sexual act with Munawar. Dr. Mahathir said he could not understand how a man could "invent a story like that".[65] Munawar, of course, had not invented the story. It was invented for him by Special Branch officers, who degraded him to the point of being a "shivering shell of a man" willing to agree to sign anything "to stop the destruction of my being".[66]

In standing trial, Anwar had to contend with more than a coerced confession by two of his alleged victims. By dismissing three senior judges in 1988, Dr. Mahathir had stamped his authority so firmly on the judiciary it was doubtful that a court would act contrary to his administration's wishes in a politically sensitive case.[67] Since Dr. Mahathir's intervention a decade earlier, a number of junior and more pliant judges had been promoted ahead of their independent-minded and experienced colleagues. Anwar recognized the problem. Although he was represented by outstanding Malaysian lawyers who provided their services for a nominal fee, he treated his trials essentially as theatre — more political than legal. Dr. Mahathir recognized the problem too. He said the government could not win, regardless of the verdict. "If Anwar is found not guilty then we lose, and if he is convicted we will also lose because we will be accused of" rigging the outcome, he said.[68]

Anwar was charged with five counts of corruption and five counts of sodomy. The first trial, in which the prosecution proceeded with four of the corruption charges, began in the High Court on 2 November 1998 and lasted until 1 April 1999, making it the longest in Malaysian history. Although "corrupt practice" was mentioned in the charges, which were brought under an emergency ordinance introduced in 1970 in the wake of the year-earlier riots, no money was involved. Rather, the term referred to abuse of power. The accusation was that Anwar had told police to secure retractions from two people who had made allegations against him in the 1997 poison-pen letters, Ummi Hafilda Ali, the estranged sister of his private secretary, and Azizan Abu Bakar, a former driver for Anwar's wife and children. Anwar was alleged to have directed senior Special Branch officers to get a written admission from both Ummi and Azizan "to deny sexual misconduct and sodomy committed by you" for the purpose of protecting himself against any criminal action.

Mohamad Said Awang, Director of the Special Branch, testified that Anwar had asked him and other officers to frighten the pair. He said Anwar had used the Malay word gempar, which means to threaten or "put a little fear in them". Anwar agreed he had used the word, but said he intended to have his accusers scolded like children. Said, however, had given his subordinates just 24