Apex court still preparing Anwar’s judgment

The standard practice for the Court of Appeal and Federal Court to complete their judgment is within three months but in some cases six months.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Federal Court is still preparing the judgment on PKR adviser Anwar Ibrahim’s final appeal to set aside his conviction and five years’ jail sentence for sodomising his former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, six years ago.

Chief Justice Tun Arifin Zakaria, when contacted by Bernama today, said he could not give the exact date when the court would deliver its verdict on Anwar’s appeal until the panel had completed writing the judgment.

“I cannot tell the exact date until we (the judges) complete the judgment. We are still reading the submissions. Let us read first before writing the judgment. Give us room to prepare it,” he said when asked on the date the Federal Court would pronounce its verdict.

Arifin, who chaired a five-man bench in the appeal, said a judge was given a a reasonable time frame to complete a judgment as every case was different from another.

The four other judges on the panel were Court of Appeal president Md Raus Sharif and Federal Court judges Abdull Hamid Embong, Suriyadi Halim Omar and Ramly Ali.

The top man in the judiciary explained that the standard practice for the Court of Appeal and Federal Court to complete their judgment was within three months after the case was heard.

“But in some cases, the courts (the Court of Appeal and Federal Court) would take a longer time, may be until six months to complete the judgment. It depends on the complexity of the case,” he said.

On Nov 7, the Federal Court reserved its decision on the appeal after hearing submissions from Anwar’s lawyer Gopal Sri Ram, a former Federal Court judge who led a team of 15 lawyers including three of the late Karpal Singh’s children, Ramkarpal Singh Deo, Sangeet Kaur Deo and Gobind Singh Deo, and senior lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, who led the prosecution team.

The hearing, which was initially set for two days from Oct 28, dragged on for eight days as the defence and prosecution presented lengthy submissions and many legal cases were cited in the appeal.

The Federal Court will make its ruling on whether to allow or dismiss Anwar’s appeal to set aside his conviction and jail sentence imposed by the Court of Appeal on March 7 this year, after it had overturned a High Court decision to acquit him.

– BERNAMA