Anwar Ibrahim, the jailed Malaysian politician who built the alliance that swept to power in last week’s general election, has been freed.
Anwar, 70, walked out of a rehabilitation hospital where he was recuperating from a shoulder surgery just past 11.29am on Wednesday.
Dressed in a dark suit, a beaming Anwar gave the thumbs up sign to the assembled crowds and appeared ready to deliver a few remarks, but was ushered into a car amid an intense media scrum.
He was accompanied by his wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the deputy prime minister, and his daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar, an MP.
Anwar had been serving a five-year jail term for sodomy, though he considered himself a prisoner of conscience.
He was released after the country’s constitutional king Muhammad V granted him a full pardon. The king has also asked for an audience with Anwar at the national palace at 12.30pm.
Pakatan Harapan leaders had asked the monarch for the pardon last week.
The coalition has promised that the newly elected prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar’s mentor-turned-rival-turned-ally, will hand over power to his one-time protégé within two years.
Anwar’s release on Wednesday caps a tumultuous two decades in which the opposition icon endured two spells in jail after falling out with two different…
