Anwar verdict sparks clashes and indignation
Anwar verdict sparks clashes and indignation
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Malaysia's former finance minister Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced to six years in jail for corruption on Wednesday, triggering violent street protests by enraged supporters and international indignation.
A defiant Anwar said the verdict "stinks to high heaven" and vowed to appeal against the judgment that could keep him out of public office until 2008.
"This is an absolute disgrace," the 51-year-old Anwar told the High Court, saying Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had subverted the judiciary and the police in a political plot.
Anwar was Mahathir's heir-apparent until last September when tensions between the two reached breaking point and the prime minister sacked his deputy.
Outraged Anwar supporters clashed repeatedly with security forces, playing cat and mouse throughout the day in the first anti-government street protests in five months.
Demonstrators threw stones and plastic bottles at riot police, who responded repeatedly with water cannon laced with eye- irritating chemicals and indelible yellow-green dye.
Protesters shouting anti-government slogans lit numerous bonfires in the heart of the capital, throwing rubbish bins, construction planks and newspaper into the flames.
Angry demonstrators broke the windows of a car belonging to private television broadcaster TV3, accused by Anwar's supporters of toeing the government's line.
Police said protesters broke windows in the courthouse and a local police station, injuring a woman constable, as well as windows of several police vehicles.
Riot police hit some protesters on the head and body with batons, leaving several of them bleeding, witnesses said.
Human rights activist Tian Chua, one of the leaders of a new party formed earlier this month by Anwar's wife, and opposition figure Abdul Malek Husin were detained.
Anwar's wife fought back tears on Wednesday as she spoke of her fractured family.
"My children are deprived of their father," Azizah Ismail told reporters outside the courthouse where Anwar had just been convicted of corruption.
"Our family is sad, our family is sad," she said, repeating herself as she fought back tears, reading from a statement as several of their six children stood by.
Goodbye
Azizah, an eye doctor who has become a politician in her own right, pursed her lips and blinked furiously for several seconds as her husband embraced her and bid her goodbye.
Shops, banks and offices near the High Court closed early. Employees with handkerchiefs over their months scurried across streets strewn with stones and empty mineral water bottles.
The protests tapered off in the early evening when police rounded up 14 men at a mosque near the courthouse. Police said a total 18 people were arrested.
The protests were among the most intense and widespread in the capital since Anwar's arrest.
"The police have abused their power as there was no necessity for them to use force," Teresa Kok of the opposition Democratic Action Party said in a statement.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told citizens to accept the High Court judge's verdict and not to riot.
"So far the situation is under control," Kuala Lumpur police chief Kamarudin Ali said in the evening.
Anwar was convicted on four corruption counts alleging he directed police in 1997 to obtain retractions from two people who had accused him of sex crimes.
High Court Judge Augustine Paul, explaining his 394-page ruling, said Anwar had abused high political office and deserved stiff punishment even though no money was involved.
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