KUALA LUMPUR, March 21 (Bernama) -- The conviction and sentence against lawyer Zainur Zakaria who was jailed three months for contempt of court ought to be set aside as the charge framed against him was improper, the Court of Appeal heard Tuesday.

Counsel Raja Aziz Addruse said the way the charge against Zainur was framed and the whole procedure adopted by High Court Judge Datuk S.Augustine Paul during the committal proceeding was wrong in law because it did not have the adequate particulars.

"By the time the judge framed the charge, the judge had decided that Zainur had committed serious contempt," he said before a three member panel of the Court of Appeal presided by its president, Tan Sri Lamin Yunus.

Zainur, a defence counsel in the Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim corruption case, was convicted after he refused to apologise to the court for filing Anwar's application to remove senior DPPs Datuk Abdul Gani Patail and Datuk Azahar Mohamad from continuing to prosecute in the trial.

Anwar, in the application, alleged that the two prosecutors were involved in a move to fabricate evidence of sexual offences against him.

Raja Aziz said the former deputy prime minister based his allegations on lawyer Manjeet Singh Dhillon's statutory declaration which laid down his meeting with Abdul Gani, as well as Manjeet Singh's letter to the Attorney-General complaining of Abdul Gani's conduct.

He said Paul however, had described the allegations as baseless and scandalous and as an attempt to undermine the integrity of the court. The counsel said it was wrong for the judge to short-circuit everything in the committal proceeding and Paul even refused to adjourn the proceeding to enable Zainur to prepare his defence.

Raja Aziz said the judge should have accepted what was said in the affidavit as there was no rebuttal from the prosecution team on the allegations.

He said Anwar has the right to bring the matter to the court's attention upon learning about the content of Manjeet Singh's statutory declaration and letter as the former finance minister was concerned that the evidence against him had been fabricated.

However, Raja Aziz said Paul had read it as an attempt to stifle the process of Anwar's corruption trial and he submitted that there was no basis for the judge to come to that conclusion.

The counsel said the judge also did not ask himself important questions such as whether Anwar is not entitled to make the application to the court to disqualify the two DPPs.

"If he is entitled, then Zainur was equally doing what was right in filing that affidavit on his client's behalf," Raja Aziz said.

The question was never put to the court below as they were not given any chance to do so, he said.

Raja Aziz who submitted that he could not understand Paul's obsession that "the corruption trial must continue smoothly and delay must be avoided at all costs", questioned whether the court could ignore Anwar's complaint which the defence considered as serious.

"Was there any interference with the administration of justice? The judge did not want to face reality, he wanted to sweep everything under the carpet," he added.

Hearing continues tomorrow. --

BERNAMA