Anwar Ibrahim A Malaysian politician has won a libel case after a newspaper claimed he said glbti activities should be legalised. Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrah won the case after he filed suit saying he never claimed such a thing. The newspaper article was based on a BBC interview in which he actually said that Malaysia's law on homosexuality should be reviewed. Despite Ibrah's request the article had remained on the publication's website. The publishers of Utusan Malaysia will have to pay a court-ordered RM45,000 ($NZ17,500) costs and damages which have yet to be established. In the late 1990s Anwar was accused of 'sodomising' one of his bodyguards and subsequently served a prison sentence. But there have been persistent doubts as to the genuineness of the charge and the reliability of the judicial process surrounding the case. He returned to politics, espousing a liberal agenda, but there have been several veiled and not so veiled accusations of homosexuality made over the years, usually by those with political agendas strongly opposed to liberalism.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 23rd January 2013 - 8:17pm