Putting an opposition leader on trial inevitably carries a whiff of politics. When that leader is Anwar Ibrahim, and the charge is sodomy, the same accusation used in 1998 to wreck his political career and confine him to jail for six years, the whiff becomes a stink. Mr Anwar, a former deputy prime minister, is playing a familiar role in "Sodomy II", as the newest case is known. He is in the dock again, but in the court of public opinion it is Malaysia's judiciary and its political masters who face the judgment of a sceptical nation.
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