KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court reversed its earlier decision and has allowed three items to be tendered as DNA evidence in the Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trial.
The items are a toothbrush, a towel and a mineral water bottle.
Justice Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah ruled this on Wednesday.
However, he dismissed an application compelling Anwar to submit his DNA sample for profiling.
In his ruling allowing the submission of the three items, Justice Mohd Zabidin said the earlier decision was made without the benefit of the investigating officer’s testimony.
He ruled that in light of the investigating and arresting officers’ evidence, the arrest was indeed lawful.
Two applications had been filed by the prosecution on March 11, are for the court to review its trial-within-a-trial decision for the items and for the court to compel Anwar to provide his DNA sample for profiling.
Solicitor-General II Datuk Mohd Yusof Zainal Abiden had submitted that while Anwar could not be made to volunteer his DNA, it was within the court’s jurisdiction to order someone else to take it from him.
Anwar’s lawyer Karpal Singh, however, submitted that whoever carried out such a testing without the person’s consent would be in violation of the Penal Code for voluntarily causing hurt to a person.
On the other application, the prosecution wanted the court to review its March 8 decision, where Justice Mohd Zabidin ruled that the three items taken from the lockup where Anwar was kept overnight, could not be tendered as evidence as they had been obtained via unfair means.
Anwar, 63, is charged with sodomising Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan in a Bukit Damansara condominium here on June 26, 2008.
Lawyers for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim today sought to implicate the country's prime minister in a conspiracy to frame Anwar on charges that he sodomised a former male aide.
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