From Straits Times, Singapore - 3rd February 2000

Defence produces letter given secretly to Anwar by Sukma to prove that his alleged sex partner was forced to make the accusations

KUALA LUMPUR -- Former Malaysian deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim said yesterday that the authorities had forced his adopted brother and other men to accuse him of homosexual acts and produced a letter in court to prove his alleged sex partner was a pawn in the plot to convict him.

He said the police had intimidated and stripped his adopted brother, Sukma Dermawan, to make him confess.

In one of his most impassioned testimonies, Anwar called the sodomy charge against him "vile and scurrilous".

Anwar, 53, maintains his ouster stemmed from a high-level political plot.

He has denied the charge of committing sodomy against his former family driver, Azizan Abu Bakar, in 1993.

Sukma is accused of participating in the homosexual act, which is a crime in Malaysia.

"There is no truth" to the government's claim, Anwar testified. "It was thought of later by the prosecution after instructions from above," he said.

Both Anwar and Sukma have already testified that the alleged menage-a-trois never took place.

Sukma earlier said that he had assisted Anwar in raping Azizan, but he later retracted the confession. He said the police had forced it out of him.

Anwar told the court that Sukma had written him a six-page letter "to seek my forgiveness for implicating me in false allegations of a homosexual relationship with him, Azizan and others".

He said that Sukma secretly tossed the letter to him from a jail cell when the two were locked up at police headquarters in September 1998 during a police investigation following his ouster.

"He threw a letter to me explaining the circumstances of how he was forced to make a confession," Anwar testified.

His defence team submitted the letter as evidence to the court. It was not made available to reporters.

Anwar also testified that in addition to Sukma, police had sought out other men to accuse him of homosexuality.

He said that shortly after he was fired from the government on Sept 2, 1998, he was approached at his home by a man who gave his name only as Ismail.

"He was desperate and in fear because he was earlier arrested by the police and forced to make a false confession of having a relationship with me," Anwar said.

He said Ismail claimed that the police had threatened to throw him into a detention camp for illegal immigrants if he did not implicate Anwar in homosexual acts.

When on the stand last week, Anwar gave a detailed account of his whereabouts over a three-month period to counter charges that he sodomised Azizan between January and March 1993 .

Anwar, who was fired by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad for immoral acts, is currently in jail serving a six-year term for corruption.

If convicted of sodomy he could receive up to 20 more years in prison. -- AP, AFP