Malaysian leader hires Indian expert to fight sodomy case

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has engaged three international DNA and forensic experts, including an Indian professor, to assist in the ongoing trial he is facing on a sodomy charge.

The names of C. Damodaran, a professor from Chennai; Brian Leslie McDonald from Sydney and David Lawrence Noel Wells, a professor from Melbourne, were announced Thursday by Ibrahim’s lawyer S.N. Nair, an ethnic Indian.

Nair said the experts would be present in the court when the trial resumes before Justice Mohamad Zabidin Mohd Diah Thursday.

Damodaran, who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of Madras in 1974, is the founder of India’s DNA Fingerprinting Initiative and India’s first Paternity Testing Centre.

Nair said McDonald, who has a Ph.D. in pathology from University of Western Australia, has performed over 5,000 paternity tests for Family Law cases.

Ibrahim failed to get the judge to withdraw from the trial earlier Thursday.

“If I recuse myself in such circumstances, it will mean that I am running away from my responsibility as a judge. A judge who has taken an oath of office should not avoid carrying out the duty which has been entrusted to him,” Star Online, website of The Star newspaper, quoted Diah as saying.

Ibrahim has sought trial on the charge levelled by a former aide, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, who claims to have been sodomised in July last year.

This is Ibrahim’s second sodomy trial. He was sacked as the deputy prime minister, charged, tried and imprisoned, but was later acquitted in the previous case.