KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia's police chief Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for accusing him of manipulating evidence, the officer's lawyer said.

Anwar has accused police chief Musa Hassan and attorney general Abdul Gani Patail of manipulating evidence in an investigation into an alleged beating he received while in police custody ten years ago.

In 1998 Anwar was arrested and later jailed for sodomy and corruption, and sacked as deputy premier. The sex conviction was later overturned.

Last month, Anwar filed a police complaint over his treatment in custody a decade ago, which resulted in him sporting a black eye.

Musa's lawyer Kamarul Hisham Kamaruddin said the country's top policeman said Anwar had slandered him by repeating in public and to the media the allegations of manipulating evidence.

"What Musa is claiming here is that Anwar, in lodging that report and publicising it with his statements in press conferences, he has repeated those allegations without substantiating it with hard evidence," his lawyer told AFP.

"He has acted with malice and made the statement recklessly as to whether what he said is true or not," Kamarul said.

Anwar has said he is the victim of a "vendetta" after spending a night in police custody last week over new sodomy accusations levelled by a young male aide.

He said he was being targeted because of the allegations he made against Musa and attorney general Abdul Gani.

Anwar rejected the new allegations levelled by 23-year-old aide Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan as another conspiracy to stop him from toppling the government, which suffered huge losses in March elections.

Kamarul said Musa is seeking an "unspecified amount of aggravated, general and exemplary damages." - AFP/vm