House arrest better than jail for Anwar, lawyers group tells Putrajaya

One year has passed since Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sent to the Sungai Buloh Prison to serve the five-year imprisonment following his conviction for sodomy in February 2015. – The Malaysian Insider pic, February 9, 2016.

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim should be released from jail and put under house arrest instead, Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) said today, one year after the opposition leader was sent to the Sungai Buloh Prison.

LFL executive director Eric Paulsen said the former parliamentary opposition leader suffered from health issues and limited access to medical treatment, adding that his incarceration tarnished Malaysia's reputation.

"In line with Anwar’s status as 'prisoner of conscience' and international concerns that have been raised, we call upon the authorities to release him on house arrest so that he can spend the rest of his sentence in a minimum security correctional facility and for him to receive the medical treatment that is not available in prison."

Tomorrow marks a year since the Federal Court upheld his conviction on a charge of sodomy, sentencing him to five years' jail.

Anwar was charged with sodomising his former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, in 2008.

"Every additional day Anwar is kept behind bars, is a grim reminder on how far Malaysia has fallen, how undemocratic and oppressive the government has become towards its political adversaries," said Paulsen.

He said the US, EU, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, International Federation for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, Inter-Parliamentary Union and International Commission of Jurists had all denounced the verdict.

The United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had also found Anwar's detention to be "arbitrary" and called for his release, said Paulsen.

HRW today said US President Barack Obama should publicly urge Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to release Anwar when the two meet at the US-Asean summit next week.

It said Putrajaya should "unconditionally release" Anwar because his incarceration was on "politically motivated charges".

- TMI