Kuala Lumpur - Malaysian authorities announced yesterday that the dissident leader, Mr Anwar Ibrahim, would soon go on open trial for 12 sex charges and the world could then see he was safe and sound.
In what a US television station, CNBC, said was a videotape Mr Anwar made for his children just hours before his arrest last Sunday, he described the sex charges as "vicious lies".
Trying to combat a growing image problem for Malaysia abroad, authorities denounced reporting of recent unrest and said foreign news organisations would not be allowed to use the state-owned broadcaster to transmit "negative stories".
The official news agency Bernama reported that in the first case of its kind in Malaysia, four people were charged in courts yesterday with spreading rumours of riots on the Internet.