The Kuala Lumpur High Court will continue hearing Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trial for six weeks from Feb 14 to March 25.

Both parties met today for case management before Justice Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah in his chambers this morning.

Defence lawyer Sankara Nair said the defence team's primary concern was that none of Anwar's overseas specialists would be free.

azlan "They will only be free on Feb 20. However, the defence will try and make sure that at least one of them is present," he said.

The specialists are pathologist Dr David Wells, DNA specialist Dr Brian McDonald both from Australia and forensic specialist Dr C Damodaran, from Chennai, India.

Following this, the trial will resume on Valentine’s Day with the cross-examination of Hospital Kuala Lumpur’s Dr Siew Shueu Feng and Dr Khairul Nizam Hassan.

So far the complainant, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, and another HKL doctor, Dr Razali Ibrahim, have finished testifying.

Anwar, 63, is charged with sodomising his ex-aide Saiful at the Desa Damansara condominium between 3.01pm and 4.30 pm on Jan 26, 2008.

However, he claimed this was another political conspiracy. He had similarly defended himself in 1998, and the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Not appealing Friday's decision

Sankara also confirmed that the defence would not appeal to the Federal Court, against the Court of Appeal’s decision on Friday to throw out the appeal for the recusal of the trial judge.

“We have decided not to appeal as we don't want the trial to be prolonged,” he said.

On Friday, a three-panel bench led by Justice Low Hop Bing allowed a preliminary objection by the prosecution that Anwar’s application was not appealable as it does not constitute “a decision” within the definition of Section 3 of the Courts of Judicature Act.

Low, along with Justices Abdul Malik Ishak and Ahmad Maarop, ruled that the High Court decision was made during the course of the trial and that the accused has no right to appeal at the interlocutory stage.

On Dec 6, Justice Zabidin refused to recuse himself following a complaint brought by Karpal Singh that the judge did not abide by a Supreme Court decision when he disallowed the defence access to medical notes of the sodomy examination.

While this was going on, the judge had allegedly threatened Karpal with contempt.