Local media has reported that a 17 year-old girl was gang raped today afternoon on the staircase of a house in Henveiru.
Online newspaper ‘CNM’ reported that the case was reported to police at about 2: 48 pm today afternoon.
According to the paper, the incident occurred inside a house named ‘Light Rose’ in Henveiru Ward.
(0)Dislikes
(0)Home Minister Umar Naseer has justified the government’s decision to implement the death penalty after a sixty-year moratorium on Islamic values, while Islamic groups have said capital punishment is a crucial aspect of the Islamic Shari’ah.
But Scholar Usthaz Abdul Mueed Hassan has called on the state to abolish the death penalty, arguing Islam is first the religion of forgiveness.
Mueed, a graduate of Qatar’s Mauhadini Sanawi and Azhar University with a permit to lecture on religious issues, contends the Islamic Shari’ah does not encourage capital punishment. The death penalty comes with several qualifications in order to discourage its implementation, he argued.
The government’s new regulations says a suspect may be executed by lethal injection if the Supreme Court upholds the death sentence and if all heirs of the victim desire qisaas – an Arabic term referring to the heirs’ right to ask for a murderer’s death.
Quoting from Sayyid Sabiq’s Fiqh Sunnah, Mueed said there are four requirements which need to be fulfilled before qisaas can be carried out.
“Firstly, it has to be seen whether the victim was pure of blood [Whether he is a blasphemer, a fornicator or an infidel]. Then whether the culprit has reached puberty. Thirdly, whether the culprit was sound of mind at the time he or she committed the murder. Qisaas cannot be implemented even if he was intoxicated at the time of murder. Lastly, it has to be proven without a doubt that the culprit committed murder out of his own free will. If not, it is the person who ordered the murder and drove the culprit to commit murder who will be subjected to execution,” he explained.
The victim and the culprit must also hold similar levels of freedom and religiosity, he said.
“In taking qisaas, it is prescribed that it must be done in the manner that the crime was committed. Like the metaphor an eye for an eye. Taken in the same exact manner. How can this be done in cases of murder? How can the life of the murderer be taken in the same manner as that of the murdered? This is prescribed so as to discourage the taking of qisaas,” he said.
Further, forgiveness precedes qisaas in Islam, he argued, quoting Verse 32 of Surah Al Maida: “Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land – it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”
Islam does not permit punishment for Hadd offenses – which include murder, theft, fornication, adultery and consumption of alcohol – to be delivered if there is any doubt in the matter, he said.
Additionally, if the executioner believes that the death sentence was wrong, he must refuse to implement it. If he carries out the execution while in doubt then he himself must face the same fate, Mueed said.
“The Prophet has also said that when seeking to implement Hadd on a person, even of the slightest reason to let it go without implementing the Hadd is detected, then do so. He then says that this is because it is far better for the person in charge – be it a judge, a president or an Imam – to err in forgiving a person than to err in sentencing a person,” he stated.
Even in Saudi Arabia – the largest 100 percent Muslim nation – the King himself intervenes in cases of murder to urge forgiveness instead of qisaas, Mueed noted.
The public voice
When I spoke to several members of the public on their views, I found those who favored the death penalty did so believing it would deter crime. In recent years, there have been spates of gang related killings, including the murder of MP Dr. Afrasheem Ali.
Waheeda Omar, a 56-year-old housewife, believed the death penalty was crucial to prevent murder.
“Let the state kill whoever is accused of murder, whether or not they have the right man. The point is, once someone is killed for the crime, other people will hesitate from committing similar crimes,” she said.
Ahmed Ubaidh, a 48-year-old taxi driver, expressed faith in the state, saying it could not go wrong in deciding on life and death.
“I don’t have an opinion on this matter. The state is the highest authority, next to the Qur’an. If both feel that death penalty must be implemented, then they must be right. Who am I to question God’s will?”
Hassan Iqbal, 32, said death must be punished with death: “They killed. Let them feel what it feels like to be at the sharp end of the blade.”
President Abdulla Yameen has also said “murder must be punished with murder.” In an interview during the 2013 presidential campaign, Yameen said he had not supported the death penalty previously, but had “a change of heart” due to “commonplace murders.”
Several members of the public, meanwhile, opposed the move, saying the Maldivian judiciary is not fit to decide on the life and death of a human being.
A 39-year-old civil servant who asked to remain anonymous, on account of “speaking about a manner that will have people accuse me of blasphemy,” stated “Islam is a religion of forgiveness. It is a corrupted version of Islam, full of political and self-interest, that promotes the idea of taking lives. In a country as small as ours, state executions will lead to more rifts, more crimes, and more hatred and unrest. I am strongly against it”.
Ali Akhtar, 28, said he “wouldn’t trust this judiciary with my property, much less my life.”
“I am not a scholar, so I will not speak in light of what the Shari’ah says. But even I know for sure that Allah would never want people to be ordered to death by a judiciary as corrupt as ours, where there is a chance that it is minority groups, and us everyday people, who are mostly unjustly sentenced to die,” he said.
Mohamed – a 25 year old who previously worked in a human rights organization – said: “Putting aside the fact that death penalty is a clear violation of Maldives’ international obligations and right to life guaranteed under the new Constitution, death penalty is clearly not a deterrent to murder. Maldives does not have the legal framework to provide the accused a fair trial.
“The judiciary is not equipped with the skill sets to examine forensic evidence put before them. Furthermore, being a small and well-connected society, the ramification of it would be huge and can have a lasting impact as the regulation puts the life of the accused in the hands of the families of victims.”
Lethal injection
The state’s decision to administer the death penalty by lethal injection has also raised controversy.
A group of medical doctors, who requested to be unnamed, said death by lethal injection is unreliable.
“There are many recorded cases where administration of lethal injection has gone wrong, leading to paralysis or worse instead of death. I would not recommend it,” one doctor stated.
“I do not think the state will, and sincerely hope they don’t, approach anyone in the medical field to administer the injection. It is strictly against our ethics; we work to save lives, not take them,” his partner added.
Dr Faisal Saeed meanwhile opined that “The specific role of health professionals in society is to heal and to alleviate suffering”.
“There is a consensus among most professional bodies that doctors and nurses involvement in executions is unethical because it contradicts the dictates of the medical profession to alleviate pain and suffering. The use of medical devices and knowledge as a method of execution distorts the life saving purpose of medicine and portrays the doctor or nurse as an executioner, which will risk to undermine public trust.”
“Execution is not the role of doctors or nurses. Although the death penalty regulations do not state who will administer the lethal injection, the state cannot ask doctors or nurses to be in a position to violate their professional ethics and values,” he concluded.
Except for the location of execution, the state has not revealed details of the procedures for administration of the lethal injection so far.
The last Maldivian to be executed by the state was Hakim Didi, who was killed by a firing squad for the crime of practising black magic in 1952.
A backward leap
Local NGOs, advocacy groups and members of the public have started to raise concern about what they term to be “a backward leap” for the Maldives.
“Given the state of the Maldivian judiciary, which is also perceived to be highly politicised and corrupt, it is most concerning that as grave a matter as life and death of humans is to be decided by it,” a recent statement by the Maldivian Democracy Network, and supported by Dhi Youth Movement and Transparency Maldives said.
Islamic blogger Aisha Hussein Rasheed has also said the death penalty can be used to silence political dissent.
“The issue is that of corruption in the justice system: police, judiciary, lawyers, etc. Look at the death sentences given recently in Egypt for example. Capital punishment can easily be used to silence political dissent or to subdue personal or business rivals,” she said.
An advocacy group – calling themselves “When The State Kills”- have launched an Aavaaz petition urging public support to convince the state to abolish the death penalty.
“The implementation of the death penalty is especially troubling given the state of the country’s criminal justice system. Even in countries with long established justice systems, innocent people have been wrongly convicted and executed,” administrators of the group told Minivan News.
“It is a well known fact that judges in the Maldives use their own discretion when handing out verdicts, without following any particular procedure or even due process. We have seen innocent people being convicted in the past, so it is likely to happen in the future. The death penalty is an irreversible punishment. It would be an inhumane error,” they said.
Over 69 percent of Maldivians believe the judiciary is among the most corrupt institution in the country, Transparency International’s global corruption barometer of 2013 has revealed. Numerous international actors, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges Gabriela Knaul have released statements of concern about the judiciary’s lack of independence and failure to serve justice.
In addition to the perceived incompetency of the judiciary, the Maldives lacks legislation for witness protection, evidence or criminal procedures.
(0)Dislikes(0)The Criminal Court has asked the Prosecutor General’s Office (PG) to resend all files concerning Supreme Court Justice Ali Hameed’s alleged misuse of state funds after case documents were destroyed in a coffee spill.
The PG has asked the Criminal Court to present the damaged documents three weeks ago, but the court has not done so yet, an official from the PGO told Minivan News.
The state is raising corruption charges against Ali Hameed over the illegal transfer of credit from his state-funded mobile phone in 2010.
An official from the Criminal Court told Minivan News on April 13 that the court had not decided to accept the case or not.
Cases filed by the PG office are scrutinised in the order of submission “to make sure all the paperwork is complete and that there are no missing documents,” he said. The process normally takes “two to three days,” he added.
The case against Justice Hameed – accused of abuse of authority to benefit a third party – was sent to the PG office in July 2013 by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) after investigating allegations in the 2010 audit report of the Department of Judicial Administration.
Auditors found that a Supreme Court Justice transferred MVR2,223 (US$144) from his state-funded mobile phone on different occasions during 2010.
According to the audit report, the interim Supreme Court bench on October 23, 2008 decided to provide for each justice “a post-paid line, a phone and to pay the phone bill without a set limit out of the court’s budget”.
The report also noted that between October 2008 and December 2011, Supreme Court judges paid their phone bills amounting to MVR 281,519 (US$18,257) from the state budget, despite the fact that parliament had not allocated any phone allowances to the judges. Additionally, MVR 117, 832 (US$7640) was found to have been overspent on wages and allowances to the driver of a judge’s car.
The judge is also currently subject to investigation over his alleged appearance in multiple leaked sex videos depicting him fornicating with foreign women in what appears to be a Colombo hotel room.
A further video also appears to show Hameed and a local businessman, Mohamed Saeed, discussing political influence in the judiciary.
Justice Hameed in the video reveals his political ‘hook-up’ with President Abdulla Yameen, claiming that he was one of Yameen’s “back-ups” and that his stand was “to do things the way Yameen wants”, promising to “kill off” Dhivehi Rayithunge Party (DRP) leader Ahmed Thasmeen Ali “if it comes into my hands.”
Even [Speaker of Parliament] Abdulla Shahid will know very well that my stand is to do things the way Yameen wants. That the fall of this government was brought with our participation,” he adds.
However, he also claims that he was a person who “even Yameen cannot play with” and that over time he had “shown Yameen” who he is.
After the sex tapes of Hameed surfaced in May 2013, the judicial oversight body, Judicial Services Commission (JSC), set up committees to investigate the case twice – in May and December 2013.
Both subcommittees unanimously recommended the JSC suspend Hameed pending an investigation.
However, in July 2013, the JSC disregarded the recommendation citing lack of evidence, while a JSC decision on the December subcommittee’s recommendation is still pending.
(0)Dislikes(0)The first Maldives Journalism Awards took place in Dharubaaruge, Malé last night (May 3). The ceremony presented “Journalist of the Year” awards to journalists working in print and radio in the Maldives.
Fazeena Ahmed, 26, of Haveeru won in the online print category, and Ahmed Naushad, Voice of Maldives, won in the radio journalism category.
Haveeru journalist Ahmed Hamdhoon censured President Abdulla Yameen’s failure to attend the ceremony, saying: “[We] feel we, journalists are not important to the government.”
The event, organized by the Maldives Media Council, selected winners based on discipline, richness of content, adherence to proper journalistic practices, quality of presentation and inclusion of photos and videos.
Winners of the Maldives Journalism Award were selected by an independent panel of judges consisting of Maldives Broadcasting Commission Chairman Ibrahim Umar Manik, former Minister of State for Information Thoyyib Mohamed, former Aafathis editors Abdulla Naeem Ibrahim, Mohamed Nazeef and Ahmed Zahir
There was an additional TV journalism category for which seven journalists applied. However, the judges said that none were selected due to lack of material.
Winner of the online journalism category Fazeena has been working at Haveeru for the past five years, and won recognition for her profile of former President Mohamed Nasheed during the presidential election of 2013, and her coverage of the Villingili children’s orphanage.
“I am very happy. Not just because I won the award, but because the Media Council has introduced such an award for the first time. This is a very important step and an encouragement for new journalists,” Fazeena told Minivan News.
She went on to identify access to information as the biggest obstacle to media freedom, and said that she had received threats because of her work.
No government officials present
In an op-ed today, Haveeru journalist Ahmed Hamdhoon expressed disappointment over President Abdulla Yameen and his ministers’ failure to attend the ceremony.
“All those working in the media are deeply saddened by President Yameen’s refusal to attend a landmark ceremony held by an independent state institution’s to recognize and encourage journalists,” wrote Hamdhoon.
Hamdhoon also criticized President Abdulla Yameen’s failure to make a statement on the World Press Freedom Day (May 3).
President’s Office Spokesperson Ibrahim Muaz Ali has said Yameen was unable to attend the ceremony because the invitation –which was delivered a week ahead of the event – came “at the last minute.”
In a statement, Muaz said the government will treat all journalists equally, and pledged to do all possible to protect media in the Maldives. He went to say that the government will enact the Right to Information Act within the period specified in the act.
The government welcomes responsible journalism, and will stop any journalism outside of acceptable borders, or attempts to create chaos or defame individuals, he added.
He recognized threats media has faced over the past two years, including the vandalism at Villa TV, the Raajje TV arson attack, and the murder attempt on Raajje TV reporter Ibrahim ‘Asward’ Waheed.
Speaking at the event last night, MMC member Mohamed Abdulla Shafeeq identified threats to journalists as a growing problem.
“Threats from public to media outlets are increasing. There have been no efforts to stop this. This is something that all journalists agree,” he said.
A landmark “Threat Analysis Report” carried out by the Maldives Broadcasting Commission last week found that 84 percent of journalists surveyed reported being threatened at least once, while five percent reported being threatened on a daily basis.
Journalists identified political parties to be the top source of threat. Gangs, religious extremists and parliament placed second while the government were rated third.
(0)Dislikes(0)The Department of Judicial Administration (DJA) will function in accordance with policies set by the Supreme Court bench and under the direct supervision of a designated justice, according to new rules (Dhivehi) promulgated by the apex court.
The rules made public last week states that the Supreme Court bench shall assign a justice to ensure that the DJA – tasked with management of the courts, public relations and providing facilities, training, archiving systems and security for judges – was implementing policies determined by the court.
The justice will be assigned for a one-year period with the responsibility of supervising the functioning of the department and “providing instructions and guidelines from the Supreme Court bench.”
The designated justice will also report to the bench on the operations of the DJA.
The Supreme Court stated that the rules were formulated under authority granted by articles 141 and 156 of the constitution.
While article 141(b) states that the Supreme Court “shall be the highest authority for the administration of justice in the Maldives,” article 156 states, “The courts have the inherent power to protect and regulate their own process, in accordance with law and the interests of justice.”
“Systematic takeover”
The DJA was formed by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) on October 1, 2008 to replace the Ministry of Justice following the adoption of the new constitution in August 2008.
While the DJA was to function under the JSC, on December 2, 2008, the Supreme Court brought the department under its remit with a ruling to that effect.
With the enactment of the Judicature Act in 2010, the DJA was reestablished with a mandate for court management, public relations, training of judges, providing for structures, facilities and archiving systems, and providing security for judges.
Although the department was to function under the Judicial Council created by the new law, the Supreme Court abolished the council in a ruling that struck down the relevant articles in the Judicature Act.
The DJA has since been functioning under the direct supervision of the apex court.
Speaking to Minivan News today, former JSC member and outspoken whistleblower, Aishath Velezinee, stressed that the administration of justice and the administration of the courts were “two different though interconnected issues.”
“The Supreme Court is misconstruing article 156 of the constitution and the appointment of a Supreme Court judge is tantamount to control of the courts,” she contended.
“This goes against the constitutional concept of independence of courts whereby each court is an independent institution, separate from the influence of other courts, including the Supreme Court. And, the own decisions of 2008 and 2011 the Supreme Court refers to are a systematic takeover of the DJA which should stand as an independent institution solely facilitating administration of the courts.”
In a comprehensive report on the Maldivian judiciary released in May 2013, United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Gabriela Knaul, wrote that as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s ruling abolishing the Judicial Council, “the only platform for internal communication within the judiciary where difficulties, challenges, experiences and opinions could be exchanged, disappeared.”
“Many interlocutors reported that the dissolution of the Judicial Council and the direct control of the Supreme Court over the Department of Judicial Administration have had the effect of centralising administrative decisions in the hands of the Supreme Court,” the special rapporteur stated.
“This has undoubtedly contributed to the strong impression that lower courts are excluded from the administration of justice and decision-making processes.”
(0)Dislikes(0)The Criminal Court has extended the detention period of a police officer caught smuggling drugs in to Male’ Custodial Center.
According to local media, the police officer was a lance corporal and was in police uniform when he was arrested.
In March, another police officer was arrested in connection to the largest drug haulfrom a police operation in the country’s history.
The police seized 24 kg of heroin with a street value of MVR36 million (US$2.2 million) and arrested four Maldivians, three Bangladeshis and 11 Pakistanis.
(0)Dislikes(0)Two officers from the Maldives Police Service have attended the Seminar on Anti-Terrorism For Asian Countries held in China from April 9 to 29.
The seminar was designed to hold discussions on the status of anti-terrorism efforts in Asian countries, and to explore additional means of dealing with terrorism crimes.
The two officers who attended the seminar are Chief Inspector of Police Ahmed Shameem and Inspector of Police Nahid Hussain.
The seminar was organised by the Chinese government and included participants from SAARC countries, ASEAN countries and outher South East Asian countries.
(0)Dislikes(0)President Abdulla Yameen has on Sunday appointed Rukshana Ibrahim as a member of the Police Integrity Commission.
Rukshana was nominated for the position by former President Mohamed Waheed Hassan when previous member of the commission Hala Hameed resigned from her post.
(0)Dislikes(0)The Criminal Court has ordered the police to hold the two suspects arrested in connection with an attack on Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Alhan Fahmy in detention until their trial reached a conclusion.
On March 30, 2014, the police concluded the investigation and forwarded the case to the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO).
Two suspects – Mohamed Sameeh of Shiny, Fuvahmulah, and Mohamed Naseem, of Ulfamanzil, Hithadhoo – were arrested shortly after the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party MP for Feydhoo was stabbed in the back at the Breakwater cafe’ in the artificial beach area of the capital.
The suspects have been kept in pre-trial detention since their arrest on the night of February 1.
(0)Dislikes(0)