KUALA LUMPUR, Tues: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today filed an application to disqualify the entire prosecution team in his sodomy case, citing "a real danger of bias" as one of the grounds.
Anwar filed the application through S. N. Nair and Partners at the High Court registry here.
He named Solicitor-General I Datuk Idrus Harun, Solicitor-General II Datuk Mohamed Yusof Zainal Abiden, DPPs Datuk Nordin Hassan, Mohamad Hanafiah Zakaria, Wong Chiang Kiat, Shamsul Sulaiman and Noorin Badaruddin, the Public Prosecutor and the government as respondents.
Anwar contended that Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, in signing of the Section 418A certificate, was strongly indicative of the fact that he was the person behind the scenes "pulling and manipulating the strings of the prosecutors to his tune."
He said that allowing the AG to continue would be "tantamount to a travesty of justice" and as such, it left him with no other choice but to make the application.
He claimed that he had an arguable case and that there were points of law to be raised in his application.
Among others, he is seeking for a declaration that the prosecution team who handled his sodomy case was not qualified to represent the Public Prosecutor and/or conduct any proceeding or appeal against him.
Anwar said his application was due to "reasonable apprehension of bias and/or a real danger of bias" by the respondents against him.
Anwar, 62, is charged with sodomising his former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 24, at a condominium in Bukit Damansara here on June 26 last year.
The High Court fixed Sept 2 for re-mention of the sodomy trial.
This is Anwar's fourth application. His first was to compel the prosecution to provide him with documents pertaining to the case, secondly was to strike out the sodomy charge and third was for a judicial review on several documents supplied by the prosecution to him.
His first application had yet to be disposed of after the prosecution was granted a stay of execution of the High Court's order to supply the documents sought by Anwar pending the disposal of the prosecution's appeal. -- BERNAMA
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