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From: BBC
Date: 04 May 1999
Time: 04:39:10
World: Asia-Pacific
Anwar faces sex trial
Mr Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Ismail (right), plans to stand for political office
Malaysia's former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is to go back on trial on 7 June for controversial sex charges involving sodomy.
Announcing the trial date, High Court Judge Abdul Wahab Patail said he would respond on 7 June to a defence request that he disqualify himself from presiding over the criminal trial.
The sex charges had originally been dropped from Mr Anwar's corruption trial.
Sodomy is a criminal offence in Malaysia, carrying a maximum prison term of 20 years and a mandatory whipping.
Mr Anwar is already serving a six-year prison term for corruption.
He was convicted in April of four counts of corruption, although the verdict drew widespread condemnation.
The former minister consistently argued that he was the victim of a plot, stretching from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad through the ranks of the police, to smear him and destroy his chances of ever attaining power.
Mr Anwar still faces one remaining corruption count and five sodomy charges.
Two men confessed to sodomy with Mr Anwar while in police detention last September, but later denied it, saying they had been tortured.