Under guard, Anwar allowed to visit mother at hospital

Under guard, Anwar allowed to visit mother at hospital

KUALA LUMPUR (AP): Guarded by prison officers with automatic weapons, jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim was rushed to his mother's bedside on Tuesday at a hospital where doctors were treating her for a heart attack. Family members said she was dying.

Anwar arrived in an ambulance escorted by Prison Department vehicles from a different hospital where he has been under care for several months for spinal injuries.

Flanked by 10 armed guards, Anwar was brought by wheelchair to his mother's room. He was not shackled and wore ordinary clothes and a back brace. A crowd of well-wishers in the corridor shook his hand.

At the door, Anwar slowly stood up and walked into his mother's room, joining other family members. A senior prison official remained with him.

After 40 minutes, Anwar was wheeled to another room, performed evening Muslim prayers, then returned to his mother's beside. "She's dying," Anwar's wife, Azizah Ismail, told The Associated Press. "It's very bad."

Sankara Nair, Anwar's attorney, said that prison officials had agreed to let Anwar remain until she died. The family was making preparations to hold a funeral Wednesday, he said, and permission would be sought for Anwar to attend.

Scores of political opposition leaders, relatives and supporters waited outside the room. Many had been gathering since early Tuesday after hearing that Che Yan Ahmad Hussein, 75, had suffered a heart attack.

Che Yan, who attended every session of her son's marathon trials over the past two years when her health permitted, suffered a series of health woes over the past year related to her heart, blood pressure and kidneys.

She had been getting treatment since March 28 in the state-run University Hospital on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, then took a turn for the worse on Tuesday.

The Prisons Department approved an urgent application to let Anwar visit.

Authorities refused to allow Anwar to visit his brother in 1999 when he was dying of cancer. He was later allowed to attend the funeral under the escort of about two dozen guards.

Last year, Anwar was allowed to visit his mother several times after she suffered a stroke.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sacked Anwar in September 1998 amid differences in handling the Asian economic crisis.

Anwar was subsequently convicted of corruption and sodomy and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He claims the charges were concocted to crush his challenge to Mahathir's longtime rule. The government denies it.

Anwar was transferred from prison to a hospital in November for treatment of a slipped disc in his back, which he claims was the result of a police beating. His family has attempted to have him flown to a clinic in Germany for specialist treatment.

The government has refused, claiming Anwar hopes to flee custody, but has offered to let a specialist from the clinic perform the operation in Malaysia. The specialist and Malaysian authorities disagree over whether local facilities are adequate.

In a news conference earlier Tuesday, Mahathir accused the opposition of trying to "propagandize" the issue.

"When he was arrested, he claimed the government injected AIDS virus, in the hope this will cause his followers to riot," Mahathir said. "Then it was arsenic. Again his followers took to the street."

"Now, it is backache," Mahathir said. "Everything is politics. There is nothing about health here."