Maldives police are searching for Abdulla Luthfee who was given a life sentence for his role in the 1988 coup attempt.
The Home Ministry reported that Luthfee had escaped from the authorities while on a medical trip abroad.
According to the Home Ministry’s State Minister Mohamed Fayaaz, the former government authorised Luthfee to go to India in 2009 for medical treatment and he was supposed to return back by January 2010.
However, Fayaz told local media that he never returned and had escaped to Sri Lanka, where he was reported to be living under a false identity. Therefore the police had been asked to find Luthfee and hand him over to the Maldives Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Services (DPRS).
“It has been over a month since we notified the police to hand Luthfee over to us. Luthfee was allowed to travel to India following a letter he submitted requesting medical treatment abroad,” Fayaz told Sun Online.
“A copy of a ticket to India was attached to the letter. He was issued a travel document passport with a validity of one year. This is how he was permitted to go to India. But now we have received information that he lives in Sri Lanka. He has changed his name. This is against the document which was issued to him, so the police have been notified to hand him over,” Fayaz added.
Police media official Sub-Inspector Hassan Haneef confirmed that police had started the search for Luthfee.
“We are using all our resources to find Luthfee and hand him over to the DPRS as requested by the Home Ministry,” he noted.
The government aligned Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM), headed by former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, accused Former President Mohamed Nasheed’s administration of setting free Luthfee last year.
However the government at the time responded that it would “never help a detainee escape” and denied the allegations made by PPM.
‘’The Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Service (DPRS) will not hold anyone in detention if a doctor advises them to send an inmate abroad for medical reasons, but that does not mean that we are making way for him to escape,’’ then State Home Minister Mohamed ‘Monazer’ Naeem told Minivan News at the time.
Luthfee and his aides were sentenced to death for attempting to overthrow Gayoom’s government in the 1988 plot, assisted by armed mercenaries of a Tamil secessionist organisation from Sri Lanka, the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).
Eighty Tamil mercenaries landed on Male’ on November 3, 1988, and quickly took over the airport. However they were caught in a shoot out with military forces in Male’ and were forced to retreat after India deployed 1600 paratroopers to the Maldives on Gayoom’s request. Nineteen Maldivians were killed in the gun fire.
Gayoom however, commuted the death sentences to life imprisonment.
Sri Lankan newspaper The Island reported Luthfee as saying on the 23rd anniversary of the November 3 coup attempt, “I wanted to get rid of [former President Maumoon Abdul] Gayoom at any cost. As the election process in my country never gave a reasonable opportunity to the opposition, I felt an outside force should be used to oust Gayoom.”
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Though Anni and his family members try to erase the records of 3rd November , people of Maldives will never be able to do so. These traitor need to be punished and they need to be remembered as a traitor as long as we exist.
During Anni dictatorship, he stop marking 3rd November and try to erase our memory but he is so wrong and people will always remember that day and darkness.
This Luthfee was directly involved in killing 19 Maldives and obviously jailed for life.
I wonder why Anni released him from prison. Releasing Luthfee will badly tarnished the image of Anni, even among his supporters. People will assocuate Anni with murderers. Very sad.
Luthfee knew already 30 years ago that Supermoon was the murderer of 169 of his Muslim "brothers".
He was damned right to try to throw Supermoon out of the country. Pity, big bity he did not succeed then.
Hope he will escape from the bagees again !
All the best, Luthfee ! Give them a run 🙂
This tell thats the actual 'baagees' are Anni and his yellow thugs. Why let Luthfee fly without military or police personnel? They deliberately let him to escape! Luthfee should be in jail for the ruthless killing of 19 Maldivians!
Hypocrites like Shiraz make me sick!
Luthfee was free under Gayoom as well. I saw him leaving Rainbow store a few years ago. He got into a police Jeep with a couple of others and left.
Why can't the politicians concentrate on doing best for the country, as opposed to undermine previous regimes actions, just to get brownie points?
Luthufy is a crook, murderer. Proven. Punish him.
Due to this,e
Island reported Luthfee as saying on the 23rd anniversary of the November 3 coup attempt, “I wanted to get rid of [former President Maumoon Abdul] Gayoom at any cost.
So now Any cost Gayoom is trying to catch hi, But Waheed is not an Enid of Luthufee,
So this certain Gayoom is having the Full controll of Police and MNDF, Sorry
He gayoom distroyed amny lifes, 112 killed in Prison, Torture,Shooting as many in Prison, Miss-used National,Funds, Introduced Drug 2 Generation in addiction,Is he still right, If so, you all are blind folded by Gayoom.
Above the Picture is very clear that justice serves by Gayoom Killer. Traitor,
African Basted.
Lthfee should not be judged as a criminal murderer, he was on a mission to remove a dictator who should be regarded as the culprit of all mishaps we see in the Maldives. Luthfee has paid price for the wrong approach of trying to remove the dictator by implicating to cause the death of some innocent civilians and hijacking people and killing them under his failed mission. What we all have to do now is to bring the democracy and freedom to feeble, naïve, ignorant, poor backward Maldivian society.
he was a patriot. he just got too carried away. the martyrs cannot be considered "collateral damage" however. they were, and lufy was too, victims of a brutal authoritarian system. the real murderers, criminals and destroyers of culture walks free among us. still trying to grab on to power. what lutfee did was wrong, but sometimes we need violence to fight brutality. which is really sad.
I wonder if @Mohm Shiraz - uninhabited and @Mariyam & Hawwa Lubna remember that horrific day? Were you all even alive then?
How easily you summarise all the events of that day to one short paragraph in an otherwise long article. 19 innocent people were killed & numerous injured, think of them & their families.
I remember 3rd november clearly & lived very near 2 ministers of that time. I can still hear the unending gun shots, screams, the shouts in tamil, the horror & uncertainty. It is not a day any true Maldivian can ever forget, no matter how much Nasheed tries to cover it up & help his relative escape.
Luthufee & his cohorts are the true traitors, in every sense. They should be brought to justice, even those running lose like former foreign minister.
No one can justify killing innocent people & hijacking the country for the greater good just to remove a dictator.
Who gave Luthufee the right to attempt the removal of maumoon 'at any cost'?
I hate Maumoon but i can't ever condone such a traitorous coup by bringing foreign terrorists with no conscience & killing innocent people.
Bottom line, Luthufee wanted to rule Maldives, not save us from Maumoon. Did he really think the tamils would just handover Maldives tied with a ribbon?
The tamils had been fighting for their own land in Sri Lanka for so long, if they finally managed to take over a country, would they just simply hand over to someone else? I don't think so.
It would have been better to make Qayoom to pay compensation of those who died in Luthfee’s attempt coup to bring down Qyoom’s dictatorship than hunting Luthfee. Luthfee has paid the price for his brutal approach to oust the dictator by being behind bars for 25 years. And this guy Qayoom is free and misleading the people to cover up his part in those deaths. Luthfee came to get rid of him because he had abused the rights of so many people by putting them in poverty, ignorance, and depriving people of their freedom to do business, to exercise freedom of conscience, and political freedom. If we think deep in to this, we find that Qayoom fellow is responsible for the carnage on that day and he should pay for the families of those who died in that day.
Dear MNDF n Police ... "Beyhaai nukulheythi Badi" ...