ANWAR Ibrahim’s lawyer has panned Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan for denigrating his client by calling him a mere convict. 

Lawyer N. Surendran said the incarcerated Anwar was known internationally as a “prisoner of conscience” and his persecution had been denounced by the United Nations.

“To brand the globally respected Anwar Ibrahim a convict is a shameful and desperate act by this junior minister.

“Even the United Nations, through its Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, has called Anwar’s jailing arbitrary and urged his release. 

“It is laughable for Nur Jazlan to ignore all this and label Anwar just another convict,” he said in a statement today. 

If the opposition leader was just another prisoner, why had Prime Minister Najib Razak visited him when he was hospitalised some months back, Surendran said.

“If he is just a convict, why does the prime minister of Malaysia visit him?”

Surendran, who is the Padang Serai MP, said it was also unnecessary to bar opposition prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad from visiting Anwar at the Cheras Rehabilitation Hospital yesterday .

“To have denied Anwar the visit from Tun Mahathir was petty and objectionable; to try and justify this by calling him a convict, is worse,“Surendran said. 

Dr Mahathir yesterday was not allowed to meet Anwar at the Cheras Rehabilitation Hospital after staff told him that there were orders from above not to permit him.

Dr Mahathir was on Sunday announced as the opposition prime minister and this was to have been his first visit to PKR’s de facto leader.

Nurul Jazlan, who was commenting on Dr Mahathir’s unsuccessful visit,  said Anwar was a convict who was not free to meet anyone without due process. 

The deputy minister denied that the Home Ministry had issued the order to bar Dr Mahathir.

The Prisons Department Director-general Zulkifli Omar today said it was the decision of the Sungai Buloh prisons director, and that the visitor had not formally applied to meet Anwar. – January 11, 2018.