It’s ‘my mistake’ to hire Saiful - Anwar

anwaribrahimblog | ... “I went through it, I know what it is. If you were to arrested today, for example, I’m not saying that nothing would happen, I wouldn’t know. To me, it almost impossible, it’s incredulous to imagine that…”

When asked what he thought of the assurance of his personal safety given by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, this was what Anwar had to say.

“Well, the prime minister is a nice man, he says many things but I don’t know who will take him seriously. Look he says, “Well, we will give them protection.” I know Saiful has been given police protection 24 hours a day. Did you see any of them here? Not that I want police around me.”

Tell us what happened from the time you heard about the police report made by Saiful to the time you came out from the Turkish embassy.

Weeks before that I was alerted that the IGP (inspector-general of police Musa Hassan) was concocting something, and that was five days or six days before someone came to convey to me that this was serious. Well, this was conveyed to me and I thought how they would allow the issues of ’98 to resurface.

At that time, did you have any inkling that it could be something similar to the accusations…

Yes, yes. They said it was something to the effect. The information of this very senior (police officer) used the word zalim - the fact that it was cruel and unjust, that’s why it was conveyed to me. The following morning I called my staff - the senior staff and also part-time volunteers including Saiful - they were all in. I said, “You guys better watch out. There is going to be problems ahead. This is coming from IGP’s office, the IGP personally.” Interestingly enough, later one of my staff informed me that Saiful personally called Musa Hassan to inform him (that I spoke about problems ahead) about the meeting. Then I took it seriously, but it was a bit too late