Uh, okay.
Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail has said in defence of the recent conviction and imprisonment of Pakatan Rakyat leader Anwar Ibrahim that Saiful Bukhari Azlan, the former Anwar aide who admitted to participating in sodomy with Anwar, was not similarly charged in court because the case was akin to corruption, with Anwar being the “giver”, and Saiful the “receiver”.
“The Attorney General’s Chambers emphasises that the case against Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is more akin to that of corruption cases,” said Gani, as quoted by The Malay Mail Online.
In a statement issued by his office last night, he said that in almost all corruption cases, the receiver is charged while the giver is used as a witness in court.
Gani was remarking in response to Malaysian Bar Council president Christopher Leong, who questioned why Saiful was not charged with abetting the act of sodomy under Section 377B of the Penal Code, which criminalises the consensual act of fellatio and anal sex, or “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.
Section 377C of the same act criminalises fellatio and anal sex committed without consent.
Gani countered that Anwar was charged un Section 377B, which carries with it no minimum jail term, based on prosecutorial discretion.
Had Anwar been charged under Section 377C, he would have potentially faced a harsher punishment, as that charge would have carried with it a minimum sentence of five years in prison upon conviction.
Gani also brushed aside Leong’s assertion that prosecutions against fellatio and anal sex were rare in Malaysia, pointing to the fact that from 2010 to 2014, there had been 171 cases tried in the court under Section 377B and another 489 cases tried under Section 377C.
On Tuesday, the Federal Court dismissed Anwar’s appeal to overturn a sodomy conviction, and upheld the five-year prison sentence previously handed to him.
He began serving his jail term in Sungai Buloh Prison on the same day.
