White House re-enabled Free Anwar petition on its website, says US Embassy

The statement was released on the US Embassy website early Wednesday.

The 'Free Anwar' petition titled, “Make the Release of Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim from Prison a Top Priority for U.S. Policy toward Malaysia’ was first published on the White House portal on February 10.

Yesterday, Astro AWANI reported that the petition was removed from the White House website. It was re-uploaded less than 24 hours later, said PKR communications director Fahmi Fadzil on his Twitter, early Wednesday.

An attempt to obtain a reaction from US Embassy officials, yesterday turned futile.

"On March 9, White House standard fraud checks indicated a high number of anomalous signatures on a petition related to the imprisonment of de facto leader, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

There were multiple petitions related to this issue, and after follow-up assessment, the White House determined that the petition it removed was not the one that contained fraudulent signatures.

To account for the error, the White House has since re-enabled the petition titled “Make the Release of Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim from Prison a Top Priority for U.S. Policy toward Malaysia,” and is extending the deadline to account for the time lost while the petition was disabled.