Anwar asked four girls for sex, says Dr M

KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad wrote in his autobiography out today that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim arranged to have sex with four girls before he was sacked as deputy prime minister in 1998.

The former prime minister said he interviewed the girls who told him they were taken to have sex with his then deputy, who was later charged and jailed for sodomy and corruption.

Dr Mahathir wrote that they were persuaded to do so by an Indian man they knew as Nalla, likely to be Datuk K.S. Nallakarupan, then a close associate of Anwar who has since fallen out with the opposition leader.

“He had taken each girl separately to a house in Kenny Hills. There they met a person they recognised as the deputy prime minister. They were asked to undress with the purpose of having sex,” he wrote in the book titled “A Doctor in the House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad”.

“Two of them said they refused but the other two consented. They were willing to talk to the police and to me but were adamant that they should not appear in court to give evidence,” the former prime minister said.

Dr Mahathir said he then called Umno leaders including mentris besar and chief ministers to Sri Perdana to brief them about Anwar’s alleged affairs and showed them pictures of the witnesses.

“He declared that he had done nothing unusual and insisted that everyone, including all the supreme council members, had done such things,” Dr Mahathir wrote of Anwar’s defence before Umno’s top leadership.

“During his long explanation, Anwar never once referred to the question of homosexuality, focusing only on the affairs with women,” he added.

Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister wrote that he had first been told about Anwar’s alleged homosexual activities in the early 1990s by then police chief Tun Hanif Omar.

Dr Mahathir, who ruled from 1981 to 2003, said he was then given the book “50 Dalil Kenapa Anwar IBrahim Tidak Boleh Jadi Perdana Menteri” (50 Reasons Why Anwar Ibrahim Cannot Become Prime Minister) but dismissed it as a sensationalist attempt to make money.

He said in 1997 Ummi Hafilda Ali, sister of PKR deputy president Azmin Ali, sent him a letter with specific allegations of sodomy against Anwar.

“The police had continued their observations of the deputy prime minister’s activities, as was their usual practice. Even if I had asked them to stop, I doubt they would have. This time they had evidence, including pictures and confessions of people involved,” he wrote in the 809-page tome.

Now the parliamentary opposition leader, Anwar was found guilty of corruption in 1999 and sodomy the next year.

He was jailed for six years before the Federal Court overturned his conviction for sodomy.

Four years later, he led the opposition pact to record gains in the March 2008 general election, denying Barisan Nasional its customary two-thirds majority of Parliament and seizing five states.

Anwar is now being tried for sodomy again, nearly three years after his former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan first claimed to be the Permatang Pauh MP’s victim.