By P Prem Kumar
KUALA LUMPUR
A lawyer for imprisoned former Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has requested that his remaining prison term be commuted to house arrest due to his worsening health.
Since being jailed for sodomy with an aide in January, Ibrahim's condition has declined and is now at a worrying stage, Sivarasa Rasiah told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday.
He said that after a four-week wait, the prisons department finally consented to requests from Ibrahim's family for him to be taken to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital on June 2 to be examined.
"Doctors have written that he [Ibrahim] needs intensive assessment and care for his instability of blood pressure, a four centimeters growth in kidney which needs CT scan, gastritis which needs a diet without gluten, a torn shoulder muscle and chronic arthritis," he said.
"He has also lost six kilograms since he was jailed."
The prison has no facilities to undertake treatment for the former deputy prime minister, he added.
Rasiah claimed that prison department authorities had been instructed by the government to decline all medical assistance proposed by Ibrahim's family.
He said that the department had said that it had not received health reports from the hospital which requested Ibrahim be placed under intensive care.
Ibrahim has had huge support among Malaysians since his entrenchment as deputy prime minister in former premier Dr. Mahathir Mohamad's government in 1998.
The opposition leader and his supporters claim that the case against him for sodomizing former aide Saiful Bukhari Azlan is politically motivated and aimed at stopping him standing in the 2018 general election.
Ibrahim has been the main opponent of the ruling party, which has been in power since independence in 1957, since falling out with the government in the late 1990s.
The 2013 general election saw his opposition coalition come close to unseating the government in what Ibrahim dubbed the "worst electoral fraud in our history."
