‘Male Y’ DNA profile tainted, Sodomy II trial told

By Debra Chong

August 25, 2011

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 25 — A local scientist had flubbed a crucial DNA profiling test that the prosecution had used to link Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to a charge of sodomising his former aide, an Australian DNA expert told the High Court today.

The defence team’s fourth witness, Dr Brian McDonald, said government chemist Nor Aidora Saedon had made a major miscalculation in her test that had led to Anwar being wrongly marked as “Male Y” whose DNA profile was allegedly found in complainant Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan’s anus.

“What you have is evidence of a mixture of profiles. She reported them as a single profile,” Dr McDonald told the court.

He said she had messed up a fundamental guideline on how to perform the DNA profiling test, which gave her the wrong reading.

The opposition leader’s sodomy trial was given an indepth review of DNA analysis, including a deeply detailed explanation of how to mark and read the results.

“If these were tests done in school, she’d have failed them,” he told an amused court.

Anwar’s defence team had back in February this year, argued there were multiple DNA profiles on a “Good Morning” towel — a key evidence exhibit in the Sodomy II trial — given to the 64-year-old grandfather during his overnight lock-up three years ago, when he was arrested for sodomising Saiful.

Defence lawyer Ramkarpal Singh Deo had then said that based on an electropharogram test done by Nor Aidora on the towel, graph results showed that there were two DNA profiles — that of “Male Y” and that of an unknown DNA profile.

She had already testified on February 23 that the DNA profiles found on the said items matched that of an unknown “Male Y”, whose sperm extracts had been found in Saiful’s anus.

Ramkarpal said the “mixture” would have pointed out to another person’s DNA which would have contaminated the profile.

She appeared visibly annoyed when Ramkarpal accused her and her work mates in the Chemistry Department of possibly contaminating the evidence samples.

“There is no contamination by my staff or anyone else. It’s a single profile as reported,” Nor Aidora had said then.

She also maintained that despite not following standard guidelines in conducting the tests, protocol had been observed based on methods adopted by her department.

The trial will resume tomorrow with the Australian back in the witness box.