Tag: police

Convicted terrorist escapes DPRS on motorbike

A man sentenced for six years for charges of terrorism relating to the Himandhoo incident escaped yesterday as he was being transferred from the court to Malé Prison.

Spokesperson for the Juvenile Court Zaeema Nasheed identified the man as Hussein Nishan, 18, of Roze Hose in Himandhoo of North Ari Atoll.

Zaeema said that the man escaped by the time he was transferred to Male’ prison by a court officer from the Juvenile Court yesterday around 3:00pm.

”A court officer took him to the Department of Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Service (DPRS) and the department requested a court officer to take him to Male’ jail,” she said. ”It is the responsibility of the DPRS to take prisoners to the place where they are to be kept.”

She said Nishan fled on a motor-bike which stopped near Galolhu Male’ Hiya.

”The court officer immediately informed us about the incident,” Zaeema said, adding the department “immediately informed the police.”

She said the court officer did not manage to see the registration number of the motor bike.

Zaeema said there had several recent cases where prisoners had escaped custody, but noted that this was the most recent incident.

”We do not have a vehicle at the court [to transfer prisoners,” she said, ”and we have very low security procedures.”

She said Nishan was charged for terrorism in 2007 for attacking the Armed Forces of Maldives in Himandhoo when he was only 16 years old.

”The case was sent to the court by the Prosecutor General’s office on 24 July 2008.”

A source in DPRS told Minivan News that the court officer went with Nishan to DPRS around 4:00pm yesterday.

”We told him to transfer Nishan to Male’ Jail,” he said, ”and when we called after a while to check where he was, Niham said that the man escaped.”

He added that Nishan had cooperated during the trial.

Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam confirmed the case was reported to the police yesterday afternoon.

Shiyam said Nishan had not yet been found and added that the police are searching for him.

Spokesperson for the DRPS Moosa Rameez did not respond to Minivan News at time of press.

President Mohamed Nasheed has previously vowed to the people of Himandhoo that the government will grant clemency to Himandhoo inmates convicted for terrorism.

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Taxi destroyed in fire

A taxi parked near Hazarsh Mart in Galolhu, Malé, caught fire yesterday, report police.

Police said the fire started at 5 pm. Nobody was injured during the incident.

The Maldives National Defense Force Fire and Rescue team attended the area and controlled the fire.

Police reported that the car was almost fully damaged during the incident and are still investigating the reason for the fire.

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National football team player arrested

Police have arrested mid-fielder for the Maldives national football team and Victory club, Mohamed ”Bakaa” Arif, in connection with a drug-related case.

Sub-inspector Ahmed Shiyam confirmed that Arif was arrested last Thursday in connection with a police special operation.

Shiyam said the case was under investigation and he could not provide more details on the arrest.

Arif was recently transferred from the New Radicals club to the Victory, for whom he still has not played a single game.

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Donor Conference pledges now US$487 million, says Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Aid commitments following the recent Maldives Donor Conference have reached US$487 million, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed and State Minister Ahmed Naseem took to the stage this morning to dismiss claims made by the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) that the donor conference had raised less US$20 million in pledges.

“That is their own number,” Dr Shaheed said.

“If you add up the money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the UN system, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) it’s almost US$200 million. That is 80 per cent of pledges coming from these big donors.”

Shaheed spoke about monitoring and implementation mechanisms, which would ensure the funds are used according to the donor’s wishes and the government’s pledges.

Coordinator for the UN in the Maldives Mansoor Ali said the donor conference had been very successful and it was “not the time to be negative” about the results.

Dr Shaheed also spoke of the recent climate change meeting held this week by the Progressive Group in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, where delegates from 23 countries met to advance negotiations before the next international climate change summit scheduled to take place in Cancun, Mexico in November this year.

The Progressive Group brings together the countries with a “forward-looking and constructive attitude to international climate change negotiations,” and played a key role in last year’s international climate change summit in Copenhagen.

Delegates from over twenty countries came together in Colombia to “exchange opinions and promote active participation towards the next climate change summit.”

The meeting focused mostly on creating ministerial-level communication between countries, in hopes to ease dialogue between nations and to advance on key issues such as fast-start financing, adaptation, low-carbon development and verification of emission cuts.

Maldives proposed a second ministerial-level meeting to take place in Malé in July this year.

Dr Shaheed also spoke of President Mohamed Nasheed’s recent visit to Europe, and confirmed that German Police officers will be arriving in Malé “very soon” to begin training Maldives Police Service (MPS) officers to work in a democracy.

“They are the ones who retrained the Stasi in East Germany after German reunification, as well as the police force in Kosovo,” Shaheed said. “They are the best in the world at what they do.”

He said the German team will stay in the Maldives from one year to eighteen months, depending on when they believe the MPS is ready, “all at the German government’s expense.”

Dr Shaheed added that Icelandic President, Ólafur Grímsson, will be visiting the Maldives soon to promote sustainable green energy alongside President Nasheed.

Dr Shaheed spoke of the recently signed agreement with the Rothschild banking dynasty, which has agreed to help the Maldives in the bid to become carbon neutral by 2020.

“There needs to be a study on where we have most carbon emissions,” Dr Shaheed said, adding that “they will also try to carbon-proof our current systems.”

The Rothschild group will secure international financing to fund a carbon audit of the Maldives. Dr Shaheed said the surveying will take approximately nine months.

Dr Shaheed ended the press conference with news of the UN Human Rights Council’s decision to draft a new international human rights treaty as an additional optional protocol to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was proposed by the Maldives.

Maldives was chosen to chair the core group discussing the CRC in Geneva, joined by Slovenia, Slovakia, Egypt, Kenya, France, Finland, Thailand, Uruguay and Chile.

The CRC, which is the most ratified treaty in the world, was lacking in allowing cases regarding abuse of the rights of children to be submitted to international UN mechanisms.

The new treaty proposes to allow cases to be sent to international protection mechanisms to intervene when domestic institutions fail to offer protection.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story Dr Shaheed was quoted as saying the visiting German police trainers were  responsible for retraining the Gestapo after the Second World War. This has been clarified as the Stasi, the East German secret police, who were retrained after the reunification of Germany post-1990.

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Police patrols now pedal powered

The Maldives Police Service (MPS) will begin using bicycles to conduct patrols, unveiling the new fleet yesterday on the 77th anniversary of the service.

The new bicycles were given a test run on the streets of Male’ during the inaugural ceremony by President Mohamed Nasheed, First Lady Laila Ali, Vice President Mohamed Waheed and Commissioner of Police Mohamed Faseeh.

Police Sub Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said the police bicycles would commence patrolling with the other police vehicles 24 hours a day.

”It is a new method of police patrol, like foot patrol,” Shiyam said.

Press Secretary for the President Mohamed Zuhair said that the new police bicycles would ease congestion on the streets and make it easier for police to patrol.

However, Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP and former minister for environment, energy and water Abdulla Mausoom said the new initiative proved the Maldives was “going backwards day by day.”

“This will make it easy for people to attack police,” he said, noting that Male’ was a “risky environment” and there had been an attacks on police last year.

The Maldives ”does not have to go back to the stone age to be a carbon neutral country,” he said.

Zuhair said the DRP were stuck in the past “and do not understand the new political environment.”

As well as a gesture towards the country’s ambitions to become carbon neutral by 2020, the government hopes the sight of police riding bicycles on the streets will set a precedent and inspire others to follow.

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Police send case against DRP MP Ali Waheed to Prosecutor General

Police have sent several cases involving  Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) Vice President and MP Ali Waheed to the Prosecutor General’s office.

Deputy Prosecutor General Ahmed Shameem confirmed the office had received several criminal cases concerning Waheed, and would decide in a week whether to take the cases to court.

“There is a process in the Constitution [that if a MP is found guilty of a criminal offence] it is punishable by 12 months in prison. He would be automatically removed from Parliament,” Shameem said.

Police Sub Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said one of the cases concerned Waheed’s claims that police helped protesters during a disturbance outside the president’s residence and MNDF headquarters in January.

He said other cases against Waheed would also be sent to the PG as soon as the police finished their investigations.

Meanwhile Waheed said he was “very confident” that he had not done anything against the law.

”It’s all President Mohamed Nasheed’s doings,” Waheed claimed. ”He is afraid of me.”

He added that he hoped the cases would be sent to the courts as soon as possible.

”They take me to police custody like a medicine they take twice daily,” he said, ”so its difficult to identify which cases they have sent to PG. Ask President Nasheed – I have no idea.”

He maintained that the police decision to detain DRP leaders in during last Thursday’s protests was “politically motivated.”

”That night when they took me Dhoonidhoo I was not doing anything,” he said. ”I was trying to protect our people from being attacked by Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)  activists and I was standing in front of DRP office as I am a leader of the party.”

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Politicians sponsoring gang violence, say police

The Maldives Police Service (MPS) has claimed some politicians are using gangs to cause unrest, intimidate people and attack opponents.

Police said that last week’s violent political clashes between major political parties, Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), were tied to gang violence.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam confirmed that “police have learned some politicians have used gang members to create unrest.”

He said that while the MPS currently could not disclose the names of politicians linked to inciting gang violence, he assured that police “will take legal action against people suspected of being involved in recent violent demonstrations and attacks.”

Minivan News spoke to three gang members on 25 March, two of whom said although they were generally uninterested in politics, they had received financial support from politicians who would pay them for protection and to attack their opponents.

Better things to do

Shiyam added that because members of the special operation had been forced to concentrate on containing the political violence, there had been a corresponding spike in gang violence, burglary and street theft.

All of these had fallen when the special operations team began their work earlier this month, he said.

Shiyam said the special operation had returned to its work again in full force.

Last week, Deputy Commissioner of the MPS Mohamed Rishwan also said the recent political violence was hampering work and diverting resources from the special operation to curb gang-related crimes.

“As a consequence a large number of officers had to stop their work and interrupt their service to the people to go out to control and watch over political activities,” Rishwan said.

Press Secretary for the President’s Office Mohamed Zuhair said police acknowledgement of politically-motivated gang violence was “a very serious statement [by police].

He noted that members of the MDP have previously accused senior DRP-PA politicians of being connected to gangs, “but police saying it makes the matter more urgent and credible.”

During his opening speech to the Maldives Donor Conference 2010, President Mohamed Nasheed referred to the matter, stating: “I don’t care whether you are a gangster, or whether you are a senior politician controlling the gangsters – if you attack, or orchestrate attacks, this government will take appropriate legal action.”

Zuhair said he hoped police would forward the relevant cases to the Prosecutor General so that they could be resolved in the courts.

Spokesperson for the MDP, Ahmed Haleem said “violence was normal under the previous regime, and DRP are doing the same thing now.”

Haleem said the DRP was trying to harm the country by trying to “stop aid and funds” from international donors.

He said the MDP was “a bit concerned” about politicians being tied to gang violence, “because some DRP MPs are physically involved in violence.”

DRP Vice President and Spokesperson Ibrahim Shareef said the party performed “peaceful protests, not the inciting of violence”, and said police would be making statements “based on their opperational experience.”

“Many DRP meetings have been disrupted by MDP activists, who attack with stones and swords,” Shareef said, adding that shops and houses of DRP members had also been vandalised in the violence over the weekend.

“We are constantly receiving threatening calls from the MDP,” Shareef said, adding that “the ruling party should be more responsible and should not use the gangs.”

“There is a lot of gang violence connected to MDP, and I am worried that it is difficult to control our own activists because they have no protection.”

“If people see the ruling party is inciting violence,” Shareef warned, “the country will lose its peace.”

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Police summon DRP MPs for questioning over parliamentary brawl

Police yesterday summoned Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) Vice president and MP Ali Waheed, DRP Vice president and MP Ahmed Ilham and DRP MP Ahmed Mahloof to police headquarters for questioning regarding last week’s brawl in parliament.

Waheed told the press that he assumed the police had summoned him in order to congratulate him on the no-confidence vote against Auditor General Ibrahim Naeem.

He said that the police questioned him about several cases, ”including a gathering near the president’s official residence, Muleeage, and about the brawl in parliament. They put the blame on us for everything happening in Male’,” Waheed said.

He claimed the questioning was a result of President Mohamed Nasheed “trying to stop us from making the government more responsible.”

”He thinks we will be afraid and back off,” he said, ”but that encourages us more.”

He said it was the DRP MPs who should have summoned the police, and questioned why they were taken into police custody on Thursday night.

”The government is planning to stop our activities and threaten us,” he said.

Ilham and Mahlouf told the press they chose to remain silent.

Press secretary for the president Mohamed Zuhair said the government had no role in the police questioning or arrest of DRP MPs, and that anyone disturbing the peace of country could expect to be arrested.

”Police will arrest them if they see them indulging in violent activity,” Zuhair said. “They were throwing rocks and chairs at a peaceful religious gathering. It’s like throwing stones at a mosque – police can’t simply ignore the matter because the throwers are MPs.”

Zuhair said he wished to repeat a quote made by former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom: ”No one is above the law”, and noted that the MPs were not arrested by ”temporarily kept in police custody.”

”The police will forward all the cases to the Prosecutor General when they have enough evidence,” he said.

”They are blaming president Nasheed just to gain political support, but the public won’t be fooled.”

Police Sub Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said the police was not just summoning the DRP MPs.

”We are investigating a case presented to us by the parliament,” Shiyam said. ”There are many independent MPs and MDP MPs to be brought for questioning.”

He said the details could not be given as police were currently investigating the case.

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Couple attacked during Earth Hour

Police have arrested a man for attacking two people who were walking during Earth Hour, reports Miadhu.

According to police, the incident took place near Galolhu National Stadium at around 11.30 pm on Saturday. A 26 year-old man and a 46 year-old woman were the victims of the attack.

Police said the man was attacked and the woman injured when she tried to defend him.

Police said the man received a cut on his forehead, but neither victim had serious injuries. They were released from ADK hospital after treatment.

Police added the suspect was arrested on Sosun Magu by Police with held from bystanders on the road, as the man was trying to flee.

The Serious and Organised Crime Unit of Maldives Police Service is investigating the incident.

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