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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's appeals court has struck out a bid by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to sue former premier Mahathir Mohamad for nearly 30 million dollars for calling him gay, lawyers said on Wednesday.
Anwar served as deputy premier to Mahathir until he was sacked in 1998 and jailed on sodomy and corruption charges. The sex conviction was later overturned and he was released after serving six years in jail.
Anwar lodged the defamation case in 2006 after Mahathir said he could not have allowed his former deputy to become prime minister because he was a homosexual, a comment the lawsuit said was "false and malicious".
The case, which was rejected by the High Court in 2007, was thrown out by the Appeals Court on Tuesday on technical grounds after Mahathir's lawyers complained the application was lodged in English, and not Bahasa Malaysia.
Anwar's counsel Sankara Nair said the case should not have been dismissed on the grounds of irregularities, which were common and should be easily overcome by the court.
"It should go on the merits of the matter. So that's why we were most disappointed that the court decided to dismiss the matter on technicalities," he told AFP.
"We have a very strong case because Mahathir has to prove that Anwar is homosexual as he has claimed," he said, adding the opposition leader would now decide whether to take the case to the nation's top forum, the Federal Court.
Since his release from jail, Anwar has reinvented himself as the leader of a resurgent opposition which gained unprecedented ground in elections last year, winning a third of parliamentary seats and control of five states.
But he now faces another bruising legal battle, with new sodomy allegations levelled by a 24-year-old former aide which could see him jailed for 20 years if found guilty.
Anwar has insisted that the latest charges against him are another conspiracy to destroy his political career.
The trial was nominally opened in July, but has not got properly underway as the defence team has filed several applications relating to legal technicalities in the case.
- AFP/so
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