Author: JJ Robinson

President offers clemency to Himandhoo protesters

Senior members of the Maldivian government yesterday met with 16 people arrested and sentenced for a violent protest against police at Himandhoo in North Ari Atoll in 2007, to discuss a reduction in their sentences under new clemency laws.

The inmates, currently imprisoned at Maafushi on sentences ranging from nine to 11 years, donned red motorcycle helmets and armed themselves with batons and knives to defend the Dhar al Khuir mosque on 6 October 2007. Police and soldiers were searching for suspects in the Maldives’ first Islamic terror investigation following a bomb blast in Sultan Park that injured 12 tourists.

The president’s Political Advisor Hassan Afeef, together with Special Envoy Ibrahim Hussain Zaki, Legal Affairs Secretary Hisaan Hussain and State Minister of Islamic Affairs Mohamed Saeed Ali Shaheem travelled to Maafushi jail to meet with the inmates to inform them that the president had made the decision to lessen their sentences.

Afeef said the government was unconvinced the group had received a fair trial under the former government, “and we don’t want anyone to undergo punishment for which they are not deserving.”

A still from the video found on an Al Qaeda forum that contained footage of inside the Dhar-al-khuir mosque of Himandhoo moments before it was raided by police.
A still from the video found on an Al Qaeda forum that contained footage of inside the Dhar-al-khuir mosque of Himandhoo moments before it was raided by police.

“The president wanted the inmates to know that people were going to criticise him over the decision, and for them to understand that their behaviour must be in line with the views of society when they are released,” Afeef said.

The conditions of their release had yet to be set, Afeef added. “That will come when the president gives the order,” he said, emphasising that “the government doesn’t take these decisions blindly. It studies the information and consults intelligence services, police and security forces.”

The president’s press secretary Mohamed Zuhair said the main reason leading to the stand off with police was not the terrorism investigation but the fact “they had started praying in their own mosque and their own homes”, an action not in line with the former government’s “single state Islam”.

“This government is against all froms of extremism religous or otherwise,” he said, claiming that the government’s “pluralist” approach and tolerance of other factions and preachers had led to better insight into the institutions operating in the Maldives.

“The president has always said that the way to avoid fundamentalism is more democracy,” Zuhair said, noting that “people join groups with good intentions.”

Pakistan dead

Earlier this week the government repatriated the remaining four of nine Maldivian nationals detained in Pakistan for alleged militant activities on the Pakistan border. The detainees were returned to their families as the Pakistan government placed no conditions on their release, although Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed announced yesterday the men would be kept under surveillance and their activities abroad investigated.

Zuhair also revealed that three other Maldivians, believed to have been part of the group, were killed while they were being transferred between facilities several weeks after their arrest following the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

“I believe they were being transferred from a facility when their convoy came under attack and the vehicle they were in hit a landmine,” Zuhair said.

“We had unconfirmed reports that they were the leaders of the Maldivian group, which may have been linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) currently waging war in Kashmir.”

Zuhair emphasised that the nine men who had returned had not been charged and were “innocent until proven guilty.”

“The political culture in the Maldives has changed,” he said. “Whereas before if the government was suspicious about someone they would be arrested and questioned, now people are innocent until proven guilty.

“I believe the government is keeping a close watch on these people,” he added.

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HRCM reports on Asseyri jail

The Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM)has sent a report to the government after visiting Asseyri jail in K Himmafushi, reports Miadhu.

HRCM visited the minimum security facility on 26 December and suggested improvements to the prison’s record-keeping system, emergency protocols and various staffing issues.

The full report has yet to be publicly released.

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CSC wins civil court case over ‘responsible officers’ at atoll and island offices

The Civil Court has overruled the home ministry’s decision to cut allowances for ‘responsible officers’ at atoll and island offices.

The Civil Service Commission (CSC) took the home ministry to court over the matter after it rescinded the allowances of the CSC-appointed responsible officers, the highest-ranking civil servant in the island and atoll offices tasked with overseeing organisational tasks and liaising with the commission.

The court ruled that the CSC’s responsibility under the Civil Service Act was to set the “tasks, responsibilities, rights and powers of civil servants, free of outside influence,” and that there was no legal obstacle to appointing responsible officers or giving them an allowance for additional work as the appointments were made “within the bounds of the law”.

The court ordered that the directive from the home ministry to the province offices “not to carry out the duties of the civil servants appointed as responsible officers, and give them allowances, shall be invalidated.”

CSC spokesperson Mohamed Fahmy Hassan said while the president-appointed island councillor’s role was to oversee the atoll and island offices, the responsible officers’ role of selecting and promoting civil servants was not conducted by political appointees.

“The government misunderstands and distrusts [the CSC] and is unable to accept what [worked] before [it was in power],” Fahmy said.

State Minister for the South Central Province, Ahmed Mujthaba, said the ruling would “really obstruct adminstration and provision of services and is in conflict with the very basis of the civil service.”

“The civil service is subordinate to the government – you can’t have them operating as a parallel government,” he said. “They are saying this is about independence but what they are creating is something very dangerous, by giving civil servants the message that they are subordinate to the CSC and not the government.”

“[Civil servants] will show allegiance and respect and readiness to those with the power to promote and transfer them – that is very basic human resources,” Mujthaba claimed.

“If that is the message, the civil servants cannot be induced to work on government programs. I don’t think this government can implement the programs it has promised with the way the civil service is currently set up.”

Mujthaba said he had observed the problem “first hand” administering his own province office: “The rules are so rigid that we can’t effectively operate a government.”

He added that it was “very unfair” for the CSC to assume the government would politicise the civil service if given a free hand.

“People elected the government because they know it is responsible. If we violate [civil servants] rights then there are people they can call. What the CSC is doing is purposely hindering the government’s development efforts. There are elements in the civil service against the government, and this is something I call on the president to look into.”

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Maldivian detainees repatriated from Pakistan

Four Maldivian nationals imprisoned by the Pakistani government for alleged militant activities have been repatriated to the Maldives and released to their families.

They join another five who were returned to the Maldives last week and also released. The government confirmed that one of the men had stood trial in the Maldives after being accused of involvement in the Sultan Park bombing, but noted that the case had been dropped.

The president’s press secretary Mohamed Zuhair said the Pakistani government had returned the men, who were picked up during a military raid on several armed groups, with no information on charges against them or conditions on their imprisonment, making them innocent under Maldivian law.

“Our information suggests there were originally 12 [Maldivians] but three died while they were being transported between facilities,” Zuhair said, adding that reports the men had been carrying firearms at the time of their arrest were conflicting.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Shaheed said the nine men had not been formally charged, and stressed that “the types of activities they are alleged to have been involved in, while illegal, do not necessarily fall under terrorism.”

Shaheed said the Maldives Police Service had determined that “the best thing to do was to release them to their families and put them under surveillance”, while their activities abroad were investigated. “There are a lot of stories about the nature of what they were doing. If we release anybody, it is because our laws require them to be released,” he said.

The home minister had travelled to Pakistan to investigate the matter, he said, emphasising that the role of foreign ministry was to “repatriate Maldivians when it is in the national interest to do so” and not “to mix that up with judgements of character”.

Shaheed noted that the Maldives does have an arrangement with Pakistan regarding prisoner exchange, particularly regarding the repatriation of Pakistani nationals currently serving time in the Maldives, but stressed that this arrangement “is unrelated to this case [of the nine Maldivians].”

He took exception to stories published today that the government was “releasing jihadists”, acknowledging that such allegations “will hurt the national brand upon which our economy depends.”

“People should not use the term jiahdist lightly,” he said. “To some it means people who mean harm, to others it means someone pious on the path to Heaven. People need to be careful what they are saying.”

Shaheed also expressed concern that the Maldives was last week described as a “safe haven” by Taliban-linked resistance fighters, who recently visited the Maldives to meet with members of the Afghan government.

“We are a soverign country and if we hear of a government [coming to the Maldives] to be involved in talks we expect them to tell us,” he said, suggesting that the country’s safety and reputation could be undermined by such “political gaming.”

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Umar Naseer to take EC to court over decision to retain IDP

Former president of the Islamic Democratic Party (IDP) Umar Naseer, who recently joined the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), has announced he intends take the Elections Commission (EC) to court over its decision not to allow the disbanding of the IDP.

Umar left the IDP last month to further his political career, claiming there was “no future” in being president of such a small party. He claimed a “the majority” of the IDP wished to disband the party altogether.

However, Deputy President of the IDP, Mohamed Hassan Manik, said the majority of the members disagreed and believed that the IDP “can still be run as a viable and independent political party.”

Umar’s decision to abandon the party, he suggested, was made “because it will be easier for him to try and become president of the Maldives [in the DRP].”

Meanwhile, the EC ruled that Naseer’s decision to disband the IDP was not valid under the party’s own regulations and that it could continue to exist as a political entity, following an investigation of what the EC’s president Fuad Thaufeeq described as “a big mess.”

“We found that the number of persons in the executive committee required to be present at a meeting to change a rule was not satisfied,” he said. “This is according to their rules.”

According to Thaufeeq, the decision to dissolve the party was taken at a meeting where less than the required 50 per cent of the executive committee were present.

“We looked at the minutes and percentage attendances at the meetings and found this regulation was not strictly followed, and is why we do not conisder Umar Naseer’s decision to dissolve the party to be valid.”

Thaufeeq said it was Naseer’s right to take the matter to court, and acknowledged that while this would be very expensive for the independent commission, “we don’t have any option.”

“There are two groups within IDP. One is with Umar Naseer, the other is against him,” Thaufeeq said. “I have no clue how this will be resolved without going to court, because regardless of our decision either group will take us to court.”

Naseer had not responded to Minivan News’ request for comment at time of press.

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Former government printed money, says president

The former government’s economic policies were unsustainable, President Mohamed Nasheed claimed during his weekly radio address, explaining that expansionary budgets combined with a lack of revenue had forced the government to print money and raise inflation.

“While three to four years ago the budget stood around Rf7-8 billion, we suddenly saw an inflated Rf12 billion budget,” he said.

“The idea would have been to finance the budget through inflows from the 60 newly leased islands for resort development. Now we all know the state doesn’t get any revenue from those resorts.”

He unveiled plans to increase the government’s revenue by expanding the country’s tourism industry into the mid-market sector and upgrading the fisheries industry. This included plans to establish the country as a fish exporter, he said.

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Maldives to strengthen defence links with India amid rising terror concerns

The Maldives will formalise its counter-terrorism agreements with India after renewed fears that Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is trying to establish a base in remote parts of the Maldives.

The LeT was implicated in the terror attacks in Mumbai on 26 November 2008 in which gunmen entered the city by sea and killed at least 173 people and wounded 308. It is considered a terrorist organisation by India, the United States, the UK and Russia.

Covering the story today, Indian newspaper The Economic Times noted that Sultan Park bomber Moosa Inas was linked to the LeT and had travelled to Kerala before the bombings, a popular recruiting ground for the group.

Indian news portal Rediff.com today quoted Indian intelligence bureau sources as saying that the LeT “has nearly 1,000 operatives active in the Maldives”, and that there was no way the group’s operations “can be curbed unless there is very good intelligence sharing with the Maldives.”

The intelligence sources claimed that in the last three months “there has been an increase in LeT activites in the Maldives, and several persons from [the LeT’s] Kerala group have slipped into the country and are busy setting up operations there.”

India could ill-afford a slip in its Maldives policy, given the “extreme aggression” of the LeT group, the sources told Rediff.

The notion of a thousand LeT operatives active in the Maldives “may be an exaggeration”, said the Maldivian president’s press secretary Mohamed Zuhair, “but there may be some truth in it.”

Minister for Home Affairs Mohamed Shihab is currently in India meeting his counterpart P Chidambaram to draw up a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two countries that will be signed in April.

First Secretary at the Indian High Commission to the Maldives, Naryan Swamy, said the agreement would formalise existing arrangements with the Maldives but the details would have to wait until Shihab returned.

Zuhair said the MoU was “very important because it gives notice that the Maldives will not allow terrorist operations here.”

“The Maldives is very important to India’s security – the Mumbai bombers attacked via sea,” Zuhair said. “The sea is India’s vulnerable underbelly because there are so many entry points, and the Maldives can be very helpful with that because every day we have 1,500 fishing vessels sometimes 70-100 kilometres out to sea. If they see any suspicious vessels they can coordinate the information through various centres in the Maldives.”

The system appeared to work, Zuhair said, because after the president’s speeches following the Mumbai bombing several poaching vessels were apprehended based on information from fishing boats.

India was already assisting the Maldives to establish a chain of coastal radars stations across the country’s atolls, he said, which will be networked with India’s own radar network.

Zuhair acknowledged that such defence cooperation might “concern” countries like China, but he noted that “of all our neighbours India is the natural country of choice to assist the Maldives.”

Last week Al Jazeera reported that a group seven fighters linked to the Taliban met in the Maldives with Afghan MPs to discuss an ambitious peace plan whereby Taliban soldiers would be paid to put down their arms. Al Jazeera’s report claimed the fighters chose the Maldives as the venue for the talks because it was “the only place they felt safe.”

Zuhair emphasised that the Maldives “will not allow terrorists to operate in the country and put the Maldives’ and our neighbours’ peace and security at risk.

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Yameen files civil court case against Thasmeen over debt collection

The civil court has confirmed that the leader of the People’s Alliance (PA) Abdulla Yameen has filed a court case against Ahmed Thasmeen Ali, the recently elected leader of PA’s coalition partner, Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP).

The court said the case was regarding ‘debt collection’, but was unable to reveal the amount being sought. The case was filed on 31 Jan and the submission fee paid today, the court stated, adding that a judge would now be assigned to the case and a hearing scheduled.

Yesterday Yameen spoke to newspaper Miadhu claiming the elections process within the DRP was “not free and fair”, and that it was undemocratic that the party’s leader should be automatically selected without an election. Miadhu noted that Yameen’s own party had elected him as leader uncontested.

Yameen said today that the court case was “a civil case with no bearing on a political arrangement”. He said he “wished the coalition well” and did not want anyone “especially the media” to politicise the matter.

In late December Yameen denied that the relationship between the two coalition parties was strained, telling Miadhu that any problems within the coalition were the “wishful thinking” of the MDP.

DRP member Mohamed Hussain ‘Mundhu’ Shareef said while he assumed the issue of the court case between the two leaders would be discussed by the party’s council, “this issue does not concern me as a DRP member.”

“The bottom line is that Yameen has filed a case against Thasmeen, not that the leader of the PA has filed a case against the leader of the DRP. It has nothing to do with the parties.”

The coalition agreement, Mundhu noted, was “a parliamentary coalition agreement, not a fully-fledged coalition.”

He said he did not expect the court case to damage the public’s perception of the coalition, an alliance which gave the two parties a working majority in the 2009 parliamentary election.

“We just heard the headline, we’re not sure where its coming from, or why they felt the need to go ahead with a court case,” Mundhu said.

When the Congress meets later this month, “Thasmeen is going to be the leader – that’s basically a fact,” he noted.

Former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom endorsed Thasmeen as his successor to the DRP leadership during a speech announcing his retirement from politics last week.

DRP spokesman Ibrahim Shareef said the court case “means nothing” and was furthermore “a private matter”.

Yameen’s comments regarding the fairness of the party’s selection of leadership were “his own private opinion”, Shareef stated, and as for the health of the coalition, “there are some difficulties but they are not major concerns.”

Spokesperson for the rival MDP party Ahmed Haleem Zaki speculated that the court case was “politically motivated.”

“Yameen wants to become a leader,” Haleem said. “He has a lot of experience during the last government and is a very qualified guy. He is very educated and has a good mind, and is very determined: he has played a sometimes very dirty role in politics. Thasmeen isn’t popular in the Maldives – he has 6-7 members in parliament, but a lot of financial problems.”

In November last year Thasmeen and several members of his family were questioned by police over issues raised during an audit of the Bank of Maldives (BML).

According to the report by Auditor General Ibrahim Naeem, loans totalling Rf1 billion taken out by Fonadhoo Tuna, a company owned by Thasmeen, and luxury yachting company Sultans of the Sea, connected to the party leader, had yet to see any repayments.

Together the loans accounted for 13 per cent of the total amount loaned by the bank in 2008. Naeem commented at the time that defaults on bank loans issued to “influential political players” could jeopardise the entire financial system of the country.

In early December the civil court ordered Sultans of the Seas to pay over Rf654 million (US$50 million) in unpaid loans, fines and accumulated interest to BML over the course of one year.

Thasmeen had not responded to Minivan News’ requests for comment at time of press.

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