The Australian forensic expert says the samples would have degraded.
KUALA LUMPUR: An Australian forensic expert, the third defence witness in the Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy II trial, drilled holes into the prosecution’s case today when he pointed out several weaknesses in the way the local authorities conducted themselves in gathering evidence in the sodomy case.
Dr David Lawrence Noel Wells, the head of forensic medicine at the Victoria Institute of Medicine, said it was more than likely that DNA samples – which were extracted from complainant Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan’s anus after 56 hours, and later kept in a drawer for 43 hours – would have degraded.
“Is sending a swab for testing 43 hours after the swab was taken acceptable?” asked Anwar’s lawyer Sankara Nair, to which Wells replied: “It certainly wouldn’t be pretty.”
’43-hour-old DNA samples not pretty’
