FAC News - Wednesday, March 26, 2003 9:43 PM

Day three of the Anwar Ibrahim Appeal Hearing:

Judge was criminal in his actions

Karpal Singh took over from Christopher Fernando for the afternoon session of the third day of Anwar Ibrahim’s appeal hearing and kicked off by telling the Kuala Lumpur Appeal Court he would like to talk about the conduct of the judge.

Karpal said they had applied to disqualify the judge, Ariffin Jaka, because he is a shareholder of a company which Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s son, Mirzan, owned.

(The computer-based company, Dataprep Holdings Sdn Bhd, is known to monopolise all the government computer business in Malaysia and is set to make millions through the government’s lavish computer programs).

The basis of Karpal’s argument was that Ariffin is involved in the Prime Minister’s son’s business. Then it was the Prime Minister who appointed him a judge. And the case before him involved a conspiracy that involved the Prime Minister.

Clearly there is a serious conflict of interest here.

Karpal then told the court that Anwar had been deprived of a proper defence.

The date on the charge was amended from May 1994 to May 1992, then to “one day at 7.45pm between 1 January 1993 and 31 March 1993”, explained Karpal.

However, argued Karpal, they were not allowed to put in a defence they were entitled to.

Karpal then explained that, under Section 153 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code, the charge must contain details of the time, date and place, and sufficient time must be given to the accused to prepare his alibi. The case, therefore, should have been adjourned to allow the defence a minimum ten days for it to file its notice of alibi.

“Preparation of strategy is a right of the defence.”

“Dato Seri Anwar had a statutory right to demand a postponement to file a notice of alibi.”

“The learned judge knew what he as doing.”

“That’s what happens to a judge who pre-judges and tries to justify the unjustifiable.”

“This is illegal and against the law.”

“The evidence cannot be considered and whatever is in the judgment should be expunged.”

“When a charge is changed, and the accused needs to answer to this new charge, time must be given to the accused to defend himself.”

“The law is very clear. The prosecution must give ten days.”

“The pre-trail notice is mandatory and there should be no discretion in the matter.”

Karpal added that the 90 days period stated on the charge in which Anwar had to provide his alibi violated section 153 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

“It is a horrendous charge,” said Karpal.

“I don’t know what I did three days ago.”

Anwar had to explain what he did six years before that, over a period of 90 days. And though it was not Anwar’s task to prove where he was but the prosecution’s task to do so, Anwar still managed to provide an alibi that covered all those days.