Police Beat Anwar, Malaysia Says, but Culprits Are Mystery
International Herald Tribune
January 6, 1999
Thomas Fuller

The Malaysian government said Tuesday in a report on the beating of Anwar Ibrahim that the police caused certain wounds to the former deputy prime minister. But it said that a three-month investigation had failed to identify the people responsible.

Mr. Anwar's lawyers and the head of the leading opposition party said the failure to find the culprits was "scandalous."

Mr. Anwar was beaten while in police custody in September after being arrested under the country's internal-security laws. At the time, he told a judge that he was blindfolded and beaten until "blood seeped down my nose."

Malaysia's attorney general, Mohtar Abdullah, said in a statement issued to the Bernama, the national news agency, that the police were "fully responsible" for the injuries to Mr. Anwar.

"Nevertheless," he added, "the investigations which have been carried out so far have not identified the person or persons responsible for such injuries."

Lim Kit Siang, head of the leading opposition party in Parliament, the Democratic Action Party, called on the government to take the investigation out of the hands of the police "to prove to Malaysians and the world that there would be no cover-up."

The attorney general said that the investigation would continue but that "from the evidence obtained so far," the government did not have a case.

Kamar Ainiah Kamaruzaman, one of Mr. Anwar's lawyers, said: "It's highly unlikely that they don't know what happened to someone when he was detained at police headquarters. People going in and out of cells are recorded."

She added: "Someone is responsible. We believe this has gone on for too long."

The attorney general said the investigation into Mr. Anwar's beating involved 67 witnesses, including three doctors, Mr. Anwar himself and dozens of police officers.

The inquiry was led by Mat Zain Ibrahim, who was then head of the criminal investigation department in the provincial city of Malacca.

Mr. Mat Zain has since been promoted to the same post in the capital, the national news agency said Tuesday.

Mr. Lim, the opposition leader, called for the "swiftest public accountability of the brutalities."

"The question uppermost in everybody's mind must be: If a person who had held as high an office as deputy prime minister, the No. 2 highest post in the country, cannot get justice when arrested by the police, how can any ordinary Malaysian expect justice when they run afoul of the law?" he said.

Mr. Anwar's beating convulsed Malaysia, which has long regarded itself as more developed and sophisticated than most of its neighbors. After news of the beating became public, tens of thousands of Malaysians staged rallies around the capital calling for justice and reform. Posters of the popular former deputy prime minister sporting a black eye became the rallying image of protesters.

Perhaps capturing the national mood best was the scene at the courthouse when members of Mr. Anwar's family and his lawyers first learned of the beating.

"I am so sad that this can happen in our country," Pawancheek Marican, one of Mr. Anwar's lawyers, said immediately after emerging from the courtroom on Sept. 28. "Things are not normal here anymore."

Mr. Anwar described his beating to the judge: "I was asked to stand up, and I was boxed very hard on the left part of the temple and the right part of the head. I was half-conscious, and the police helped me to clean up my nose and my lips."

At the time, Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, who on Sept. 2 dismissed Mr. Anwar from the government, did not discount the possibility that his former protégé's wounds were self-inflicted.

"It's not impossible, because he will get plenty of mileage if he showed he was abused by police," he said.

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