Additional reporting by Mohamed Naahee
The Maldives Bar Association (MBA) has called for the suspension of Supreme Court Justice Ali Hameed pending an investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct.
In a statement, the MBA challenged the independence and transparency of any Judicial Service Commission (JSC) investigation without the suspension of the judge in question.
Hameed is under investigation by both the police and JSC over the circulation of at least three sex videos apparently depicting him fornicating with unidentified foreign women.
Four members of the JSC voted in support of a motion last Wednesday (July 17) against suspending Justice Hameed due to “lack of evidence”, despite recommendations that he be taken off the bench until investigations were concluded.
Following the decision, JSC Deputy Chairman Abdulla Mohamed Didi and Latheefa Gasim resigned from the five-member committee investigating the matter.
The Bar Association, presided over by former Attorney General Husnu Al Suood, said in a statement (Dhivehi) released today that it was “against principles adopted in modern democratic societies” to allow Supreme Court Justice Ali Hameed to remain on the bench while he faced allegations of adultery and other concerning conduct.
The JSC last week disregarded a recommendation by its own investigating committee to suspend Hameed, leading the MBA to questioned whether the JSC was capable of reviewing the matter impartially.
The Bar Association said prompt action was needed to verify whether the allegations against the judge were legitimate, in order to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the Maldives judicial system.
Priority, the association argued, had to be given to uphold credibility, integrity and public trust within the country’s legal system rather than “defending the interests” of a single judge.
The statement also called on the JSC to appoint two members to the subcommittee investigated the judge’s conduct that had been left vacant by the resignations of Abdulla Mohamed Didi and Latheefa Gasim.
Transparency calls for investigation
NGO Transparency Maldives also expressed concern that leaked video footage purportedly of a supreme court judge acting in a “culpable manner” could jeopardise the integrity of the country’s apex court, and public confidence in the wider democratic system.
“There is a duty vested upon all relevant authorities to uphold and protect the integrity of such a important state institution,” the NGO said in a statement (Dhivehi).
“Therefore, Transparency Maldives believes that, in order to ascertain Supreme Court’s credibility and public trust, it is very important for all authorities to reveal the truth behind the accusations as soon as possible.”
The NGO called on authorities and the JSC to refrain from any conduct that could be deemed as “dubious” in their handling of investigations into the judge.
Chief Judge of the Supreme Court Ahmed Faiz has meanwhile urged the public and media to refrain from making statements that would give a negative image of the judiciary, and called for constitutional amendments.
Leaked footage
The video of the Supreme Court Justice allegedly indulging in adultery came into media limelight following the arrest of Ahmed Faiz – a senior Council Member of President Mohamed Waheed Hassan’s Gaumee Ihthihaad Party (GIP) and former Project Advisor at the Housing Ministry.
Snapshots taken from the video began circulating on social media networks Twitter and Facebook, prompting a police investigation. The police formally notified all relevant authorities including the JSC, the Prosecutor General and President Waheed regarding their investigation into the case.
The JSC is also investigating a further two videos involving the Supreme Court Judge, including spy camera videos of Hameed discussing political corruption of the judiciary with a local businessman, and a meeting with former Immigration Controller Ilyas Hussain Ibrahim.
‘Fake’ claims
The footage has been branded a politically motivated attempt to discredit the judge and dismissed as “fake” by local business tycoon, JSC member and presidential candidate MP Gasim Ibrahim,
Gasim has meanwhile said he personally saw no conflict of interest between his bid for the presidency and current role on the judicial watchdog. The presidential candidate voted against suspending Supreme Court Justice Ali Hameed during the JSC vote.
The public’s representative on the JSC, Sheikh Shuaib Abdul Rahman, was sharply critical earlier this year of the commission’s conduct and motivations, particularly its “open discussion” of its intent to eliminate Gasim’s rival presidential candidate, former President Mohamed Nasheed, from contesting the upcoming elections.
“It is common now to hear a lot of MDP and Nasheed bashing in commission meetings. This was not how things usually were before. I believe politically biased comments like this have increased since Gasim joined the JSC as a representative of the parliament,” Sheikh Rahman stated in March.
“Gasim even went to the point of asking the UN Special Rapporteur Gabriela Knaul when she held a meeting with us to state in her report that it was Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) who torched the courts. I heard him say exactly that,” Sheikh Rahman said.
Knaul’s final report to the UN Human Rights Council following her mission to the Maldives in February, was a damning indictment of the country’s judicial crisis.
JP Spokesperson Moosa Ramiz was not responding to calls from Minivan News at time of press.
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At least someone is talking sense now, however, the judge in question has so much stuff that could make so many lawmakers, businessmen and corrupt individuals opt for suicide if at all he decides to TALK!
There is so much shit stuff that has happened, but we are optimistic as the new MDP government would make public what the public needs to know.
Corruption must be the first item on MDP agenda when they take power or else the streets would once again take them out.
Finally.
The political mafia has got the judiciary by the gonads. They decide who to keep, who is expendable, in a manner that fits their corrupt agenda.
Gasim, yameen, Nazim won't allow their cards to be trumped out this.
Why all this foot-dragging? If it was a peasant girl she'd be getting flogged in the Justice Ministry courtyard, in front of a cheering crowd of men. But when it's this bloated Arabized carcass it's taking forever. Suddenly people are talking about privacy, human rights, investigations, due process. LOL. None of that for the peasants right?
'Bar' association must be busy giving license to sell alcohol.
'cos we never hear about this association when the judiciary is run like a zoo.
In the videos with women of many nationalities, the Right Honorable Judge seems to be ruling over multiple jurisdictions, although some verdicts were seen coming prematurely!
Didn't read this article because it's old and insignificant Minivan, why so slow now?
I mean the articles you bring now are too few and late to read as news or make any significant comment by anyone:-)
Didn't realize the bar association had a voice? Wow, I'm impressed. Wonder what they thought of the pot bellied bull frog slapping his belly and slapping the elastic of his slinky underwear on that hunk of manhood.
Must be a case of "rivers of white wine and virgins in this life (er... well not exactly virgin, but more like well used, in this case) and the hereafter for scholars who tirelessly uphold the law".
As for the Chief Justice, he's probably jealous that this Hameed chap is having all the fun and not him! I wonder what his proposed Constitutional amendments might be. For example, how would they stop slappers (pardon the pun), like Hameed?
@ Multiple jurisdictions.Enjoyed your comment!
Let justice be sprayed far and wide to calm the discontented!
This guy Qasim must be schizophrenic. He wants to be President while he supports sex maniacs in the judiciary.
If he is afraid the judge may talk of past deals promise him some more money to keep his mouth shut.
By publicly supporting a tarnished judge doesn't Qasim realize that he is committing political suicide?
I am beginning to wonder whether he is a genuine businessman, a wannabe President or just another coral and sand miner?
There is a Bar Association in the Maldives? When was this association formed? And why have not heard their voice when Majlis failed to pass the Judiciary Act? When Judge Abdulla Mohamed refused to give a warrant to arrest Jameel for slandering President Nasheed? And anti-Nasheed MPs in Majlis walked over the Penal Code and Evidence Bill submitted by the government of President Nasheed?
@homosexual... "bloated Arabized carcass"
hahaha classic
Bettter late than never! Thank you Bar Association. At last some sanity.
Will this be enough to have this porno
Judge off the seat? Doubtful.
However the greatest looser is probably
Dr Qassim. Out on display was his moral
Compass & judgement. Is this the face of
Our future President.
Have I missed something here? Have you
Heard from the Merry band of learned
Sheiks. Aren't they the most interested in
Cleaning up society's evils? Perhaps they
Have only witnessed actual penetration
Of The porno judges rights not the actual
Thing so they can't censure the porno judge
For fear of the Gehennamme.
Nobody but the people of Maldives have failed.
No politician of any weight including all the
Presidential Candidates have raised a hum
- except ha ha haaaaa on social media.
Pathetic!
@Multiple jurisdictions!! on Mon, 22nd Jul 2013 11:24 PM and
@Angagatha Mithuru on Tue, 23rd Jul 2013 5:32 AM.
I would have loved to add some thing to your classic comments! But LOL! I am too depressed!
Maldives does, and will have its faults!
Passing the buck can be the first!
But the most miserable of these would be that which we are doing right now; happily watching a couple of punks doing injustice to the nation!
I would say that the Chief Justice should be out of his seat banging the whatever he has in his hands and dropping each and every one of these offenders immaterial of whoever it could be!
And Gasim Ibrahim, shameless as he is outright saying that he is not resigning from JSC!!!!!
The people should be running after him to tell him what conflict of interest is, and how to let go when there is any!
If not how to lynch someone!
All of these legal issues have caused me to reflect on - what law acually IS.
It is a question which I believe Maldivians need to grapple with if there is going to be genuine reform.
I just asked a question to a T, and, I thought, to try and kickstart the debate over what law is, i would ask everyone the question.
HOW SHOULD notions of what JUSTICE IS Be determined?
I believe in a concept of justice which is derived from a modern version of natural law. Many human rights activists draw from natural law philosophy. I derive my ‘natural laws’ through the inspiration of religious feelings in the attempt to awaken my rational faculties.
Sometimes what I think is right or just may be opposed to what a traditional Muslim or Christian may think is right or just.
Is natural law derived from religious text, or from reason? Is it derived from a Divine source, or from raw material nature?
Many law makers, lawyers, judges, legal theorists in the West reject the ontological premise of this concept of natural law. They refute the popular notion that there is a gap between positive law and natural law, or that positive law often goes against natural law, because they don’t believe in natural law. There is too much debate about what natural law is, about what it constitutes, and from where it originates. It has a pseudo-religious ring to it, being that modernist notions of natural law are derived from Acquinas, who ultimately applied a Christianised application to the concept of Aristotle that there is a Universal Natural Right and Wrong which earthly justice systems need to try and replicate. So, for many Westerners who believe in a separation of state and religion, natural law should not be the premise of any positive law.
I might add that Acquinas got Aristotle through the Muslim philosophers, who also attempted to align natural Law with Islamic Law.
Now I am going to get to the crux of what I am getting at.
You see, MANY of the conclusions and decisions of the Islamic natural law advocates went against the decisions of the Shariah Law jurists of the Ahl Sunnah, from ALL of the four conventional madhabs. Of course, due to their different Fiqh, certain Hannafi and Al-Shaafi jurists were more open to the concept of natural law than Hanbali or Maliki jurists. But, the concept of ijtihad in the traditional formation of istihan is very different to the concept of Al-Rai used by the early Hanafi jurists and the Mu’tazili and even the more philosophical Asharites.
SO, my question to you is, how do you derive rulings from natural law, and what if, natural law is opposed to the rulings derived by traditional jurists from the Sunnah and the Qur’an?
or even, is there such thing as natural law?
If my questions are odd and out of place I apologize. One of my greatest joys used to be stimulating my mind by engaging in these kinds of debates, conversations with my uni friends. I haven't seen those guys for many years, and, I no longer know any body who is interested in this stuff. I am just a very, very very old man trying to rekindle old mental joys. If my questions and thoughts are too weird and out of place, just ignore them. I get very mentally lonely and carried away trying to engage in such mental stimulation at times because of it.
For people who believe Sharia is something divine and perfect and their brain have been conditioned to believe this for generations, it will be a big psychological blow for them to accept the truth that it is simply rubbish formulated by ancient gullible. For some people it will be very hard to concede and even may get mental breakdown in such situation because of embarrassment for being such stupid, when they realize that they have been fooled for so many years. The Maldivain are in the same situation, any action to discredit the judges is a blow to the integrity of those who claim to be Sharia professionals and this would cast doubt on the minds of people about the true spirit of this so called divine law and the credibility of custodian of Allah’s rein. Anyone whose mind is clear of external pressure can see that Sharia is nothing special; it was simply the method of many tribal people to rule their tribes.
Why God would have to pop in to certain period of time in the history and send his postman to covey his messages about how to behave? Wouldn’t it have been better if he sent his postman with knowledge, how to cure diseases, how to fly in to space and give details how he has created space and time. This would have helped people to overcome human misery and people would have behaved much better.
Maldivian judiciary is occupied by such stupid people and they would never do anything that can jeopardize their lifelong long struggle to memories this comic they call Sharia. If they take action against this judge this will be the first step to get rid of these jokers from the judiciary leading to appoint people who may be moderate in their view about this rubbish, replacing the current
@Patriot. Thank you for your note. Sometimes we joke because we care too much. I too feel very upset when I see the state of the justice system in the Maldives. For our parents' generation it was enough to live an obedient life and hope that the life after would be better. We are not that generation. We are not so sure that there are better things to come and therefore we invest in this life.
So we care about the condition of our poor, the lack of justice, the constant presence of corruption and the wrong man always winning.
I don't have the answers. Sometimes it looks like the system is all too powerful, but I also know that we must not give up. I have learnt enough to know that things that are valuable and worth having, (justice, meaningful relationships, human dignity, freedom- take your pick) demand our attention and are achieved through hard work. I no longer just wait for things to get better, I work for it. I think a lot of us who comment on this media are like that- not just people making jokes, but trying to show they care- one way or another. Even Kuribee!
So don't feel depressed. There are things we can do. What we do may not change the world, but change comes slowly and quietly and every little bit we do helps. My son once told me that justice does not come as a thunderbolt from the sky. But it does eventually come in more subtle and less obvious ways.I beleive him. One way or another, there will be a day when the gasims and the waheeds (lack of capitals intentional!) of the world will lose all they have. Maybe they already have as very few people have any respect for them. All the best.
Shame shame that the Sheiks, defense forces and MPs are silent when the sacredness of the nation is raped by a pervert judge. May be all are in it
Also plse block the self confessed senile Ben Plewright from comments. It's longer than a Ramdan day and nuisance to read
@Ben, I think Sachedinah tries to reconcile natural law and Shariah.
@Ben Plewright
Loved reading your post. Very thought provoking. I am by no means of an expert when it comes to law but if there is one thing that I know, it is that as far as conservative Muslims are concerned, rulings should be strictly derived from the Quran and Sunnah. If the natural law is opposed to the rulings derived from traditional jurists from the Sunnah and the Qur’an, they'll most probably just ditch the natural law. Like Fishy head said, most people seriously believe Sharia is something divine and perfect.
@homosexual
calling him an Arabized carcass is being pretty nice to him.
@Multiple jurisdictions!!: Epic comment! Will you marry me?? 😀
The whole problem in the judiciary comes from the common belief about Sharia. As long as you think that Sharia is divine law and unchangeable, you can never reform the judiciary. Sharia is very clear and you have no ambiguity in any Sharia Law. But still you need scholars who are experts in this rudimentary set of rules, simply to announce what Quran says. The funny thing is, there no single Maldivian who is not expert on this. Everybody knows what is in Quran, how to deal with all Quranic offences, it is very simple, bring two witness or get confession in order to prove the case and then chop of the hands, kick the A**** of those who engage in anti social sex or consume taboo foods and drinks.
Isn’t funny that Maldivain justice system spends lot of money to run this kangaroo justice system with bunch of retards whose job is to do the most easy, less costly form of judicial functions? Also isn’t funny that all Maldivians are well aware that the main cause of the climb in all social injustice and crime rate is due not implementing sharia in its full force? But the question is, when the Sharia was fully implemented that Maldives went through with no crimes and no social injustice under full Sharia law.
Isn’t the case that Maldives is going through a transformation from theocratic dictatorship to democratic society where there is hell of lot individual rights which contradicts every aspiration of Sharia. If people believe sharia is infallible and should be upheld with any cost then there is no way you can reform judiciary. You don’t need judges who are intelligent, rational, just and educated, you need judges who are experts on Sharia who normally are the most wicked people because you don’t need fair intelligent people to run Islamic rule because it is already written by wicked people and you just have simply put a rubber stamp on it.
Awesome enlightening stuff from all.
My view is a pragmatic option in terms of working for reform within the parameters that I think are possible. As I don't believe the Maldivian legal system could ever do away with shariah completely, the best you can hope for is a reformed shariah law. A modernised shariah draws from the ayah which appeal to the primacy of the sanctity of life and liberty, and draws from the ayat which appeal to both a priori and a posteriori reason , (logic and science.)
This has implications for issues such as the use of DNA, the death penalty, flogging and other issues.
In such a system I believe shariah hating atheists need freedom to vent because they are the best there is at pointing out the hypocrisy of shariah and that increases the level of transparency of the judges. Hopefully that could work to inspire the judges to keep honest, if only to avoid jeopardising their own security.
All I was getting at was the simple fact that SO CALLED LAW, and the religious system and other ideological systems which are employed to serve it, repress true JUSTICE. Justice SHOULD TAKE priority over law.
A law which is unjust must be resisted.
It takes more courage than most people have to lose everything you have for JUSTICE.
But, true fasting, should be rooted in the pursuit of justice - within ones self.
Socrates asked his followers, what would the fate of a truly JUST MAN be?
Some said, he would be made wealthy, rewarded as a hero.
Socrates said NO. A truly JUST MAN would be killed by the people, that is the nature of TRUE JUSTICE in a world ruled by laws of POWER.
Oh sorry, spelling correction, the name of the guy I was talking about was meant to be Aquinas, not Acquinas. A large portion of his philosophy was derived from Arabic Muslim sources.