Khairy can rely on ruling Anwar has homosexual tendencies in defamation suit

The court today allowed Khairy Jamaluddin to amend his defence in Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's RM100 million defamation suit. – The Malaysian Insider filepic, April 6, 2015.The Federal Court has allowed Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar to amend his defence to show that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has homosexual tendencies, in response to the opposition leader's RM100 million defamation suit.

A five-man bench chaired by Tan Sri Raus Sharif said the defence of partial justification was allowed in defamation suits in Malaysia.

“We allow the appeal and the decision of the Court of Appeal is to be set aside.”

He also gave Anwar, represented by Datuk Sulaiman Abdullah, a month to reply after Khairy had filed his amended defence.

“The ruling means that we are now able to rely on this as partial justification because the Federal Court in 2004 had found enough evidence that Anwar was involved in homosexual activities.

“Instead of saying you are homosexual, we are saying the Federal Court said you are homosexual,” Khairy's lawyer Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told reporters outside court today.

On August 20 last year, the Court of Appeal dismissed Khairy's appeal to amend his defence.

Anwar had filed the suit against Khairy on March 7, 2008, for uttering defamatory words and causing a video entitled "Anwar and kin no threat" to be posted on websites, including Malaysiakini.com.

The opposition leader also claimed that the video on Malaysiakini included parts of Khairy's speech at Lembah Pantai on or around February 20, 2008.

The then Federal Court judge Tun Abdul Hamid Mohamad, who later became chief justice, had in a majority ruling acquitted Anwar of sodomising his wife's driver, Azizan Abu Bakar, at the Tivoli Villa in Kuala Lumpur in 1994.

However, Hamid, who was in the majority, had remarked that the former deputy prime minister had homosexual tendency, which Anwar failed to expunge last year.

- TMI