Malaysian Ex-Minister Alleges Poisoning : Anwar Is Hospitalized After Test for Arsenic 
International Herald Tribune
September 11, 1999
Thomas Fuller

A judge ordered Anwar Ibrahim hospitalized Friday after lawyers for the former Malaysian deputy prime minister submitted medical tests that they said showed dangerously high levels of arsenic in his urine and alleged that he had been poisoned.

The pathology report submitted by Mr. Anwar's lawyers showed arsenic levels roughly 75 times that of "unexposed persons," in the words of the report, which was prepared by a laboratory in Australia.

"It is dangerous for him to go untreated," said Judge Arifin Jaka, who immediately suspended Mr. Anwar's sodomy trial and ordered that Mr. Anwar submit to further tests at a hospital outside Kuala Lumpur.

Karpal Singh, one of Mr. Anwar's lawyers, told the judge that the levels of arsenic present in Mr. Anwar's urine went "beyond danger." "His life is in jeopardy," he added. "If he's slowly being poisoned, something must be done about it. If someone is trying to get rid of him, it's a shame because this is the very conspiracy we have been alluding to all this while."

Mr. Anwar has spent much of the last year in a courtroom defending himself against charges of abuse of power and sodomy — charges that he denies and that he says are politically motivated.

On Friday, he went one step further, saying that the arsenic was part of the political conspiracy against him. "I regret that the conspiracy to topple me has not been limited to just political action but now also involves physical moves to poison me," he said in a police report filed after the court was adjourned.

The tests on Mr. Anwar show a level of 230 micrograms of arsenic for every gram of creatinine, a substance found in urine that is used as a benchmark in laboratory tests. Most people have less than 3 micrograms of the potentially deadly element in their urine.

"It's high, much higher than expected," said Chiu Hak Fai, a pathologist at the Hong Kong Adventist Hospital. But he warned that many factors could influence a urine test for arsenic and that results could only be interpreted with more information. Eating seafood, for instance, can distort results because it contains nontoxic forms of arsenic.

A leading U.S. expert in clinical chemistry who declined to be named said that serious arsenic poisoning would involve much higher levels than those shown in Mr. Anwar's test.

"It looks like the guy had seafood for dinner the night before the test," he said. "Someone who is being intoxicated with arsenic will be putting out urine concentrations of 10,000 not 230."

Christopher Fernando, one of Mr. Anwar's lawyers, said that the former deputy prime minister decided to send his urine for testing when he felt "unwell and weak."

"When his hair started dropping out and he felt a numbness in his fingers he was advised to send his urine for tests," he said.

Mr. Anwar, who was sentenced in April to six years in prison for abuse of power, was fired a year ago by the man he thought he would succeed, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad.

Soon after his dismissal, police in black ski masks broke down his door, arrested him and brought him to a police station where he was beaten by the then-chief of police. He was not granted bail during his trials but was kept in a prison outside Kuala Lumpur.

After Mr. Anwar's beating became public last year, Mr. Mahathir initially suggested that the wounds on Mr. Anwar's face could have been self-inflicted, a suggestion that a committee appointed to investigate the beating refuted.

On Friday, the country's attorney general, who is prosecuting the case against Mr. Anwar, suggested that Mr. Anwar could have been accidentally poisoned by members of his family.

"I must caution my learned friends not to jump the gun and accuse some people of conspiracy to kill or injure Dato Seri Anwar," said Attorney General Mohtar Abdullah, using Mr. Anwar's formal title.

"It could be accidental poisoning through food and drink consumed not only in prison but in the court's precincts." He added: "I have personally seen the accused consuming drinks and food in this very courtroom."

Mr. Anwar's lawyers were scheduled to argue on Friday that Judge Arifin drop the sodomy case against Mr. Anwar for lack of evidence, but Mr. Karpal, the defense lawyer, started the session inside the yellow and red brick courthouse in a decidedly different tone.

"I wish to draw your attention to certain matters which go beyond the significance of this trial," he said, before going into details of the test for arsenic.

Mr. Arifin, after ordering that Mr. Anwar be sent to the hospital, addressed Mr. Anwar. "Is it worrying you?" he asked. Mr. Anwar replied: "I was disturbed. But having gone through what I went through last year, I'm not surprised."

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