2 notorious cases challenge malaysia's modesty

authorities censors in this bulk Muslim state uphold an ethos of modesty by snip sex scenes from films and order entertainers to avoid outfits that reveal too much on Malaysian stages - bare belly buttons and figure-hugging outfits are off bounds.

But these days Malaysians looking to avoid R-rated content might be advised to read past news study about their own leaders. Top politicians are embroiled in two dirt involving accusal of buggery and the gruesome murder of a mongol kept woman.

Reports on the finer points of a rectal examination and disclosure about the sexual preferences of the dead kept woman make other sex dirt that once shocked people here - such as Monica Lewinsky and her blue dress - seem about Victorian.

This is not the first time that sex and political relation have publically collided in Malaya. The trial of Anwar beijing, a former deputy prime curate, for buggery in the 1990s featured, among other highlights, a blood-stained mattress being hauled into the court.

This time, wider use of the net has helped disseminate written document, facts and rumour that would otherwise have been filtered out of mainstream news media tightly controlled by the authorities.

The two dirt encompass much more than just sex. They are part of a broader clash betwixt two men vying for power: Anwar is facing new allegations of buggery at a time when he is vowing to unseat the government party, while the other dirt involves Anwar's principal political rival, Najib Razak, the deputy sheriff prime curate and anointed heir to Prime curate Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

What is badgering for many Malaysians is that the baseball glove appear to have come off in the high-stakes fight betwixt Anwar and Najib.

Testimony in the slaying trial revealed that in-migration records of the Mongolian woman and her friend had been deleted.

Malaysia's political opposition says the case highlights the impunity of the police and high officials in government as well as a lack of independence in the judiciary. A police officer took the stand and said she was tortured by police investigators - her own colleagues.

Witnesses in both cases have dropped from sight, including a private investigator, Balasubramaniam Perumal, who alleged in a sworn statement issued shortly before disappearing that the dead Mongolian woman was Najib's mistress.

The statement by Balasubramaniam, which has been widely circulated online, contradicted Najib's repeated assertions that he never met the Mongolian woman, Altantuya Shaariibuu.

Balasubramaniam spent two months writing and revising a 16-page declaration about the case, based on conversations he had with the murdered woman and Abdul Razak Baginda, an aide to Najib. Balasubramaniam retracted the allegations in a hastily convened press conference and then disappeared.

"It's obvious what has happened here. You don't need to be a rocket scientist," said Americk Sidhu, the private investigator's lawyer. "Somebody needed him to shut up."

Balasubramaniam's wife and three children are also missing. The family's two Rottweilers were left behind in their cages.

"A lot of very dark things are happening now," said Raja Petra Kamarudin, one of the most influential and prolific Malaysian bloggers. Raja Petra was formerly a political associate of Anwar's wife, Azizah Ismail, in her National Justice Party.

Although a number of gruesome facts in the Mongolian case have emerged in court over the past year - Altantuya, for example, was shot and her body obliterated with explosives in the jungle outside Kuala Lumpur - Raja Petra asserts that only a fraction of what happened is being admitted into court.

Citing sources in military intelligence, he issued a sworn declaration in June alleging that Najib's wife, Rosmah Mansor, was present at Altantuya's killing. Government prosecutors say Altantuya was killed by two commandos who also served as bodyguards to Malaysia's top leaders.

"I don't think Malaysia can afford to have a prime minister who has a huge question mark hanging over his head: Is he, or not, involved in the murder of this girl?" Raja Petra said in an interview.

Najib has called the allegation in the declaration "total lies, fabrication and total garbage" and a "desperate and pathetic attempt to discredit and taint my political image."

The government charged Raja Petra with criminal libel, a law that lawyers say has not been used in recent memory in Malaysia and which, unlike civil defamation, can carry a two-year prison term. Separately, Raja Petra has been charged with sedition and his house raided several  times.

Raja Petra was also responsible for leaking a medical report last week relating to the sodomy case. Anwar's accuser, Mohamed Saiful Bukhari Azlan, a 23-year-old former campaign volunteer, went to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur hours before lodging a police report charging that Anwar had sodomized him. But the medical report, which also circulated widely on the Internet, says he complained of a piece of plastic being inserted into his anus. The doctor who wrote the report, Mohamed Osman, said he found "no active bleeding, no pus, tear or scar."