Mahathir bin Mohamed Iskandar filed an affidavit on April 4, 2000, in Kuala Lumpur High Court stating that he does not want to be a witness in the ongoing trial of Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia.

Not a single argument put forward by Mahathir is valid, credible, or relevant to his official and moral obligation to tell the truth in a court of law about the tall claims on "proof" of sexual misconduct he has been making since hatching a botchy conspiracy to ruin the political career of my long-time friend, Anwar Ibrahim.

Once again, this misleader of Malaysia has shown his extraordinary flair for debauchery. He has left no doubt that his incredibly long grip on power is perpetuated through outright lies, deceit, manipulation of executive privilege, blackmail, bribery, police brutality and torture, cock-and-bull media, and an amazingly compliant judiciary.

This senile despot needs to be given a stern reminder that on September 14, 1998, thugs from the Special Branch of the Malaysian police raided my house. In front of my wailing, weeping, wife those savages kidnapped me to keep me as a shackled hostage in their unknown and known dungeons for the next 126 days.

The world came to know of my disappearance, under the conspiracy orchestrated by Mahathir, only after Amnesty International declared me a Prisoner of Conscience. Later, Pen International adopted me as a Writer in Prison.

The subservient Malaysian media either stayed mum or spread ingrained disinformation on my whereabouts. My wife was constantly misled with threats and harassment and her attempts to engage a lawyer on my behalf were frustrated by the police.

The assault that took place on that Monday morning was after direct orders issued by Mahathir in his capacity as Home Minister enforcing the Draconian Internal Security Act. I, therefore, hold him personally responsible for that heinous crime against me and my family. No camouflage under any constitutional, legal or journalistic parlance will ever exonerate him of inflicting the trauma that my family and I continue to endure consequent to his deliberate crime that led to my abduction.

My prolonged detention by Mahathir's hoodlums taught me how it feels to be forcibly separated from one's wife and children. How it feels to be searched and seized, disallowed to make phone calls, handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped naked, driven in an animal cage, shaven bald, endlessly interrogated, humiliated, drugged, deprived of sleep, physically abused. What it's like to be threatened, blackmailed, tormented by police lawyers, brutalized to make a totally false confession, hospitalized for a consequent heart ailment, and treated as a psychiatric patient with symptoms of Stockholm syndrome.

Barely surviving on a meager diet of rancid rice and chicken along with 12 medicines a day, I spent nearly four months handcuffed around the clock to my hospital bed, under the watchful eyes of the prison guards.

Thereafter, my ability to speak, read and write took a considerable time to show signs of recovery. Short-term memory lapses were frequent. I existed in a fluid state in which suicidal tendencies, depression and despair were punctuated by fits of rage and indignation.

In collusion with the lawyer appointed on my behalf by the police, the Malaysian authorities refused the legal assistance of my choice, coercing me not to mount an appeal against the court verdict and threatening me with greater punishment under new charges if I did not co-operate.

Simultaneously, my wife constantly endured police harassment, wiretapping, and disruption of our e-mail and bank accounts. Some of our friends were met with the same fate and were compelled to abandon us when we needed them most.

While this brutality against me and my family was being precisely coordinated by the police, the media, and the judiciary in their respective roles, Mahathir had the audacity to delude everyone with his fraudulent statement that he had "incontrovertible proof, that it (the allegation of sodomy) is true...Other people cannot very well get the information I got." (The Straits Times, Singapore, September 23, 1998)

If Mahathir has the "incontrovertible proof" then why is he keeping it close to his chest? Why does not he come out in the open? But Mahathir knows that the "truth" was manufactured in his laboratory of crime and corruption where innocent people like me were targeted, tortured, and coerced into making totally false confessions. That is what he means by saying that "Other people cannot very well get the information I got." And that perhaps is the only truth he has ever spoken.

If Mahathir is not involved in this vicious criminal conspiracy then what explains my abduction? Why did Mahathir send his police thugs to kidnap me? Why my abductors committed those inhuman acts against me and my family? Why the police appointed a lawyer for me while preventing my wife from seeking legal assistance? Why the Special Branch "Dato" pleaded to me that "Anwar was a threat to Malaysia and they were trying to get rid of him?" Why SAC II Musa Hassan himself conveyed his satisfaction to me inside the police headquarters night before the sham court proceedings? Why a kangaroo court pronounced a verdict within thirty minutes of my forced appearance? Why, after the court, DSP Mazlan Mansoor conveyed to me a "congratulatory" message from the then Inspector General of Police, Rahim Noor, now himself a convicted criminal? Why the police thugs, accompanied by the police lawyer, continued to force me not to file an appeal? Why the media continued to confuse the issue of my appeal with planted stories? Why were there several attempts to again kidnap me from the hospital to the police dungeon called Bukit Aman? Why was my family a target of police harassment while I was chained to my hospital bed? Why my appeal to set aside the fake "conviction" and "sentence" remains in cold storage as a victim of legal intrigue?

My Statutory Declaration is a public record of criminal indictment of Mahathir, his government, his police, his media, and his spineless judiciary. If Mahathir is not the mastermind behind the conspiracy to topple Anwar Ibrahim then why has he remained silent over my Declaration, given the fact that he has the "incontrovertible proof?" What explains the reluctance of his administration to take legal and punitive action against my abductors?

Mahathir's desperate attempt to avoid a court appearance in Anwar Ibrahim's trial is markedly contradictory to several of his public statements. He stands exposed before the world and those who colluded with him in perpetrating the crimes of abduction, torture, blackmail, harassment, fabricated evidence, perjury, psychological trauma, and slander against me, Anwar Ibrahim, and our families.

When the convict Rahim Noor made a near-deadly assault on a blindfolded and handcuffed Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir termed it as a self-inflicted injury. And the father of all toadies in the Malaysian media, Kadir Jasin, (former editor of the much maligned daily New Straits Times), wasted no time in attributing Anwar's black eye to a meteorite hitting his prison cell.

It is obvious that no court in Malaysia, despite the sanctimonious claim, has shown any moral or legal mettle to bring Mahathir and his co-conspirators from his own administration, the police, the judiciary and the media to justice. Apart from handing down a totally unjust and hasty verdict in my name while I was held hostage by the police thugs, these courts have cited at least two lawyers of Anwar Ibrahim for contempt.

It is not a coincident that a report released this week of a mission on behalf of the four major international legal organizations (International Bar Association, the ICJ Center for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, the Commonwealth Lawyers' Association and the Union Internationale des Avocats) has concluded that, "there are well-founded grounds for concern as to the proper administration of justice in Malaysia in cases which are of particular interest, for whatever reason, to the government. Plainly, this is only a small proportion of the total number of cases which arise, but they are of vital importance to the well-being of the entire system of justice in Malaysia. The central problem appears to lie in the actions of the various branches of an extremely powerful executive, which has not acted with due regard for the other essential elements of a free and democratic society based on the just rule of law," (Justice in Jeopardy: Malaysia 2000, page 77).

The crimes of Mahathir and his co-conspirators must not go unpunished. These felons must be brought to face a world court for their crimes against humanity.

Dr. Munawar A. Anees