Police have taken a 20-year-old male suspect into custody yesterday in relation to a stabbing in Hulhumale’ on Monday night (April 26), local media reports.
Ibrahim Ausham, 25, was treated at the Hulhumale’ hospital after he was reportedly stabbed four times near the ‘China flats’ in Hulhumale’.
Police declined to reveal further details as the case was under investigation.
(0)Dislikes
(0)The Criminal Court has released 21 individuals arrested from a music festival on Anbaraa Island on alleged drug abuse.
Only 13 of the 79 initially detained are now in custody.
The Maldives Police Services had also released 44 individuals on Tuesday.
Detainees have accused the police of brutality during arrests including the use of batons and rubber bullets.
Opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has said constitutional rights and human rights procedures were violated during the police raid.
However, the police have denied accusations claiming all detainees were informed of their constitutional rights, informed of the reason for their arrest and brought before a judge within 24 hours of arrest. Police also noted the raid was carried out under a court warrant.
(0)Dislikes(0)The Ciivl Court has ordered the reinstatement of a police officer who was dismissed for allegedly attempting to modify witness statements.
Police Constable Ahmed Haisham was dismissed from the police force in 2009 after he confessed to calling two Lance Corporals and asking them to change witness statements against a man suspected of stabbing another police officer.
However, the Civil Court said Haisham cannot be dismissed from his job unless he is found guilty by a court of law.
The ruling referred to the Supreme Court ruling 2012/SC-C/35 which reinstated the Civil Service Commission (CSC) Chair Fahmy Hassan who was dismissed by the parliament after he allegedly sexually harassed a female staff working at the commission.
The Supreme Court said Fahmy cannot be dismissed unless found guilty by a court of law, claiming that if Fahmy was dismissed from the position without being investigated and proven guilty, as per the criminal justice procedure, then his dismissal was to be considered as double jeopardy.
Referring to Fahmy’s case, the Civil Court said Haisham must be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Further, the ruling said the Employment Act does not apply to Haisham as he is a police officer.
The ruling noted that although the police had carried out investigations, a case had not been forwarded to the Prosecutor General (PG) for prosecution.
The Civil Court has ordered the police to compensate Haisham for lost wages since December 2009, clear his record and grant him promotions he may have received had he remained with the police force.
In October 2013, the Civil Court also ordered the reinstatement of a police offices and a soldier who were dismissed on criminal charges.
Civil Court Judge Maryam Nihayath said that the Supreme Court (ruling 2012/SC-C/35) had brought into existence important procedures to follow when dealing with such cases.
The court ordered former Intelligence Chief Mohamed ‘MC’ Hameed to be reinstated in 2013. He had been dismissed from the police after the controversial transfer of power on allegations that he had abused his authority as the chief of police intelligence for the benefit of a certain political party and that he had leaked secret information obtained by the police.
An MNDF officer Ahmed Althaf who was dismissed from the force on allegations that he lost a compressor valve and asked a lower rank officer to replace it with an older one was also ordered to be reinstated in October 2013.
(0)Dislikes(0)Convicted drug kingpin Ibrahim Shafaz Abdul Razzak must return from medical treatment in Sri Lanka by May 20, Home Minister Umar Naseer has said.
Shafaz’s temporary release in early February has garnered controversy with the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) confiscating the passport of an expatriate doctor who signed the medical report recommending that Shafaz be sent abroad for medical treatment.
Shafaz is serving an 18 year prison sentence and was fined MVR75,000 (US$4,860) for drug trafficking in November 2013.
Speaking on Villa TV (VTV), Naseer said Shafaz’s authorized period to stay abroad will expire on May 20 and that the Home Ministry will seek assistance from the Interpol to find any inmates who flee.
Naseer defended the Maldives Correctional Services (MCS), claiming a prisoner will only be sent abroad on the recommendation of two specialist doctors. The MCS would only provide inmates with a temporary travel document instead of a passport, he claimed.
Shafaz has now appealed his 18 year jail term at the High Court.
Commissioner of Prisons Moosa Azim has previously told Minivan News that all due procedures had been followed in Shafaz’s release.
“A medical officer does not have to accompany the inmate. He was allowed to leave under an agreement with his family. Family members will be held accountable for his actions, including failure to return,” Azim told Minivan News at the time.
Shafaz was arrested on June 24, 2011 with 896 grams of heroin from a rented apartment in a building owned by ruling Progressive Party of the Maldives MP Ahmed ‘Redwave’ Saleem.
Former head of the Drug Enforcement Department, Superintendent Mohamed Jinah, told the press at the time that police had raided Henveiru Fashan based on intelligence information gathered in the two-year long ‘Operation Challenge’.
Jinah labeled Shafaz a high-profile drug dealer suspected of smuggling and supplying drugs since 2006.
He claimed that the network had smuggled drugs worth MVR1.3 million (US$84,306) to the Maldives between February and April 2011.
Since the formation of the new government late last year, the Home Ministry has made the combating of illegal drugs its top priority, culminating in the confiscation of a record 24kg of heroin.
(0)Dislikes(0)Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) MP Alhan Fahmy has said that he believes senior officials of the current government was behind a knife attack on February 1 that left the opposition MP’s left leg paralysed.
Speaking at the last sitting of the 17th People’s Majlis today, the outgoing MP for Feydhoo noted the violent attacks on MPs during the past five years of multi-party politics and fledgling democracy, including the brutal murder of Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) MP Dr Afrasheem Ali.
Both MPs and the public were left in a state fear by the attacks on parliamentarians, Alhan said.
Alhan was stabbed in Malé on the evening of February 1, 2014, while at the Breakwater cafe in the artificial beach area of the capital.
The results of the final MDP parliamentary primaries were officially revealed the same day, with Alhan losing the Feydhoo constituency seat to Mohamed Nihad, who received 316 votes to the incumbent’s 154.
After the results of the primary contest emerged, Alhan alleged irregularities in the vote via social media, declaring his intention to challenge the outcome.
Two suspects – Mohamed Sameeh of Shiny, Fuvahmulah, and Mohamed Naseem, of Ulfamanzil, Hithadhoo – were arrested by the police in connection with the case.
The case against the two suspects have since been forwarded to the Prosecutor General’s Office for prosecution.
Alhan has had a chequered recent past with the MDP, rejoining the party in June last year after an apparently acrimonious departure in April of the previous year. Then party vice president, Alhan was ejected – alongside then party President Dr Ibrahim Didi – after the pair publicly questioned the party’s official interpretation of the February 7 ousting of President Mohamed Nasheed.
The Feydhoo MP subsequently organised a rally – sparsely attended – calling for the freeing of the MDP from its talismanic leader Nasheed. Alhan’s soon joined the government-aligned Jumhooree Party,
Alhan was initially elected to parliament on a Dhivehi Rayithunge Party (DRP) ticket, making him one of the few MPs to have been a member of almost every major political party represented in parliament, barring the DRP’s splinter party, the Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM).
He was dismissed from the DRP in 2010 for breaking the party’s whip line in a no-confidence vote against then Foreign Minister, Dr Ahmed Shaheed
Last August, Alhan was summoned by police in connection with the alleged blackmailing of Supreme Court Justice Ali Hameed, using footage of the judge having sex with two foreign women said to be prostitutes.
The MP tweeted a screenshot of a text message he claimed had been sent to his mobile phone by Superintendent of Police Mohamed Riyaz. The text read: “Alhan, will make sure you are fully famed (sic) for blackmailing Justice Ali Hameed. You don’t know who we are.’’
(0)Dislikes(0)This article first appeared on Dhivehi Sitee. Republished with permission.
A lot has been written about the music festival on the desert island of Anbaraa attended by local and international DJs, some tourists and 198 partygoers. According to the event organisers, Tourism Minister Ahmed Adheeb and certain officials of the Yameen government allegedly approved the event in an unofficial capacity. Most of what has been said in the Dhivehi media is framed to make it appear that these young people at the music festival were engaging in an orgy of illicit activities on the island, and that the authorities acted rightly by raiding the event and arresting one female minor, 19 women and 59 men present at the festival.
Unfortunately, the susceptible majority of the Maldivian public do not see the political and unconstitutional underpinnings of these arrests, and most often than not, wholeheartedly accept such narratives. This proves beneficial for certain politicians in the Maldives, known for garnering support along ultra-nationalist and Islamist lines, as the Anbaraa incident provides an opportunity to generate just such rhetoric. Their understanding is that the youth are to be blamed for testing the limits of an increasingly conservative society. The awful truth is that people in positions of power indulging in similar behaviour, and much worse, are not subject to the same laws.
The Maldives Police Service claims it raided the island around midnight on Friday night. Detainees have described the operation as a hypocritical, aggressive and excessive display of brute force and psychological warfare. Many of the detainees claim the police used stun guns, grenades, tasers, taser guns, batons, guns and rubber bullets during this operation. Initially flares were shot and the authorities used amplifiers to announce – “you will all be killed if you don’t calm down” while charging at the partygoers. “They shot stun grenades at the centre of the dance floor in front of the main stage”, one of the detainees said. “Rubber bullets were shot in the air and a lot of people were tased with tasers and taser guns,” he continued.
Many detainees said they were all verbally abused and humiliated. Talking of the religious and cultural undertones of this operation, one female detainee said an officer yelled at her, “Are you a European?” A male detainee alleged that two officers grabbed him by the neck and called him an infidel. Another female detainee claimed she was pulled by the hair and ear, and hit on the back. Some of the male partygoers intervened when police resorted to sexualised violence against women – these men are now being detained separately from other detainees, although not in solitary confinement. Some detainees allege they were beaten and showed visible scars. Many detainees note disturbing police actions such as some officers allegedly stealing detainees’ belongings and, in the presence of some detainees, consuming illicit substances found on the island.
After the island came under police control, the detainees were rounded up and brought to the main stage. They were cuffed using plastic clips and kept kneeling down. The island did not have enough water and the Maldives Police Service did not bring any food or water with them for the detainees. When the detainees asked for water it was not provided to all, and some were humiliated for requesting for water. At this point, detainees were allegedly asked to go to sleep. On Saturday morning around 6-7am the police allegedly ordered the catering service to provide food for 198 detainees while the island was under police control. Even at this time, the Maldives’ police did not facilitate rights afforded to those accused or detained under Article 48 of the Constitution. Although police claim that the detainees were informed of their rights, the fact that these men and women were kept incommunicado for about 14 hours proves that the authorities failed to facilitate their inalienable fundamental rights to acquire legal counsel or information regarding the arrest.
Another factor that deviates from standard police practice in such cases is that, according to the detainees, belongings and persons on the island were searched on Saturday afternoon, and none of this was done in the detainees’ presence. Most detainees claim their tents were searched or dismantled while they were handcuffed. And, they claim, not only were their belongings rummaged but articles of clothing and money went missing after the police went through them. Article 161 of the 2011 Drugs Act requires police to split urine samples into two — one sample is to be tested by the Maldives Police Service while the other is to be tested by an institution stipulated by the National Drug Agency. This procedure was not followed, nor were the urine samples collected or processed according to the Urine Specimen Collection, Transportation and Testing for Illicit Drugs Regulation 2012, meaning that many detainees’ urine samples were taken after their remand hearings. Another irregularity is one that contravenes the Judicature Act – detainees were brought to the Criminal Court in Malé even though the alleged offences occurred in Vaavu Atoll. According to the male detainees, only female detainees were given lifejackets while they were being transferred to Dhoonidhoo Custodial Centre from Anbaraa.
During the remand hearings the police claimed that 119 people present at the island were released because they did not find any illicit substances on their person or belongings. This argument does not make sense as the police claimed that the entire island was a crime scene. The argument is further weakened by the fact that some of the detainees currently in custody did not have any illicit substances on their person and only have urine tests as evidence against them. Such contradictions in the claims made by the police suggest that the 119 were released because the police would not have been able to process all detainees within the specified time limit. Law requires all detainees to be brought before a judge within 24 hours of arrest.
These events are reminiscent of infighting among cabinet ministers during ex-dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s regime, which then spills over into the public sphere. If the Yameen government – even if in an unofficial capacity – gave assurances to the organisers of the music festival that it could go ahead, why has the Home Minister Umar Naseer vocally reacted to this incident as if to say the police were working under his orders? The feud between the current president Abdullah Yameen Abdul Gayoom; half brother of ex-dictator and Umar Naseer; the current Home Minister, has been at the forefront since the onset of the presidential election campaign in early 2013.
Some of the detainees are also of the impression that the government may have raided the event to create a distraction from the arbitration proceedings being held at the Singapore Court of Appeal regarding the cancellation of the GMR agreement during the coup appointed presidency of Dr. Mohamed Waheed, which ended in December 2013. In early 2010, the Indian infrastructure company GMR was contracted to build Ibrahim Nasir International Airport by the Mohamed Nasheed administration, which was toppled by his deputy Dr. Waheed and Gayoom loyalists. If the infrastructure giant GMR wins the arbitration case, the Maldives’ government will be subject to approximately US$1.4 billion in compensation.
All these factors create the public perception that current government is not fully in control of the security forces due to infighting, or that the security forces can be mobilised by the current government to carry out politically motivated attacks that have very little to do with morality, crime prevention, implementing the law, or protecting the youth from illegal drugs. Neither perception creates trust or confidence towards the current regime in power, but both highlight the human rights abuse and inconsistency of the implementation of law in the Maldives.
All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]
(0)Dislikes(0)The individual sought by police on suspicion of stealing a large sum of money from Maldives Inland Revenue Authority (MIRA) has been arrested, reports local news outlet Sun Online.
Police stated that the individual was arrested at around 9:30pm last night (April 23).
“He was arrested with assistance from members of the public. He is of Bangladeshi nationality. More information will be revealed after investigation,” a police media official told Sun.
Police said earlier that the individual has been suspected of stealing MVR26,000 that had been placed on the service counter at MIRA on Sunday.
According to police, the individual stole the money from a service counter at the office on 20 April 2013. The stolen MVR26,000 was kept on the counter by another person who was at the office to pay taxes.
(0)Dislikes(0)Yesterday evening, police transferred all the women taken into custody at the Anbaraa music festival to house arrest.
Nineteen women were amongst the 79 people arrested on suspicion of being under the influence, and in possession of, illegal drugs on Friday (April 18).
An official from the Home Ministry told online newspaper CNM that the women were transferred to house arrest due to a lack of space in detention centres and difficulties in catering for them.
He told the paper that they were all transferred under the authority held by the home minister. He further noted that the court warrant to extend their detention period stated that they should be detained in a place determined by the Home Ministry.
Meanwhile former President and acting president of Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) Mohamed Nasheed told press yesterday that, while the police told the court everyone arrested had tested positive to illegal drugs, he had information that they had not all been tested when they were summoned to the Criminal Court to have their detention extended on Saturday (April 19) .
Nasheed said that the only situation where police should raid any place in the manner they did, is when their lives were at risk or if the police believed they might be attacked when trying to arrest a person.
The opposition leader said that he did not understand the reason why police had to raid an island firing rubber bullets and shouting when its inhabitants were a group of young people entertaining themselves.
Nasheed also alleged that, after raiding the island, police officers handcuffed all the young people and went fishing.
He repeated the allegations he previously made against Tourism Minister and Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) Deputy Leader Ahmed Adheeb and said that he was one of the event organisers.
Nasheed suggested a cross-cabinet plan in which it is one minister’s duty was to gather all the young people to one place while the other minister’s duty could be arresting all of them at once.
The PPM have described Nasheed’s comments as an “uncivilised” attempt to sabotage the implementation of its youth manifesto as well as the other youth development efforts of the government.
The Maldives Police Service yesterday denied allegations by the opposition MDP that constitutional rights and procedures were violated in the arrest made in Anbaraa.
The MDP’s rights committee has contended that procedures specified in the constitution for arrest or detention – such as informing suspects of the reasons in writing within 24 hours, providing access to legal counsel, and presenting suspects before a judge within 24 hours for a remand hearing – were breached by the police.
Moreover, the committee alleged that police did not act in accordance with regulations governing the exercise of law enforcement powers concerning arrest and detention.
Last weekend police searched 198 persons and arrested 79, including one minor, during a music festival on Anbaraa island in Vaavu atoll.
Home Minister Umar Naseer the following day in a tweet said that law will be enforced without any exemptions, writing that “anybody can party but no drugs on the menu.’’
(0)Dislikes(0)This article first appeared on Dhivehi Sitee. Republished with permission.
More than half of the Maldivian population is under the age of 25 and, with over a third of the population aged between 18-35, the Maldives has one of the most youthful populations in the world. This weekend around 200 of them assembled on the desert island of Anbaraa for an overnight music festival.
All elements that any reasonable person expects at a modern event of the sort were present—great DJs, young people up for a good time and, unsurprisingly, party drugs. On Friday night, when most revelers were at the peak of their enjoyment, a Maldives Police Service (MPS) team in riot gear raided the island. Apparently they were in possession of an arrest warrant, issued by one of many farcical courts that comprise the so-called judiciary.
The MPS asked no one’s permission to get on the island, respected no laws, followed no due procedure. Police statements have made it clear they were aware of the plans for the music festival, and also that it would take the form of a rave. They made no move to stop it from going ahead. When they raided the island on Friday night, they were fully aware of what they would find — a bunch of young people in a highly vulnerable state — and proceeded to assert their supremacy on them as aggressively as possible.
The MPS could not have acted more triumphantly if they had managed to bust the world’s biggest drug cartel. According to eye-witness accounts, they threw smoke grenades onto the unsuspecting revelers, barged into their tents without permission, searched their personal possessions without their knowledge, and handcuffed everyone deemed ‘guilty’ before holding them in custody for 14 hours without the right to counsel.
Once they had been humiliated, and by some accounts several beaten up in custody, it was time to turn the whole affair into a media circus. Pictures of various partygoers were splashed across computer and television ‘news’ screens as if they were members of a newly busted paedophile gang deserving the most forceful of today’s naming and shaming techniques.
The worst of the humiliation was reserved for the women, as can be expected of the misogynistic society the Maldives has become today. First came the reports across the entire media spectrum—from the mainstream to the most obscure—that several of the women had been found ‘naked’, ‘nude’, ‘everything bared’, etc. Pictures of laughing policewomen in headscarves marching the young female partygoers in handcuffs and sarongs appeared on all print and online newspapers.
As it turned out, all reports the women were naked were total lies, engineered to belittle and humiliate ‘the weaker sex’ as much as possible. The women were made to wear sarongs to court — not to cover their nudity, but to cover up the lie that none of them were naked. Wearing shorts, apparently, is now tantamount to being naked in the tropical island ‘paradise’.
The treatment of these young people is a supreme example of the hypocrisy that defines modern Maldives. It is one of the worst kept secrets of Maldivian politics that most of the Maldivian cabinet, and a substantial number of parliamentarians in the Majlis all drink alcohol and/or take recreational drugs. Several government Ministers not only drink but also facilitate parties and raves for young people they know. On the more sleazy side of things, several do so with the goal of getting sexual favours from young people in exchange for the illegal substances provided.
Quite apart from the disgusting hypocrisy of those in power, and separate from the widespread heroin addiction that has afflicted an entire generation of Maldivian youth since the 1990s, it is also a fact that social drinking and indulging in recreational drugs are common among young Maldivians, especially in the capital Malé. In recent years the use of party drugs such as ecstasy, and even more recently LSD too, have increased as it has in most cities across the world.
Meanwhile, in a country where alcohol is only meant to be available to tourists who holiday in the exclusive resort islands, it is commonplace for copious amounts of alcohol to be sold and bought in and around Malé every weekend. Government officials—and police—are fully aware of this. Many, in fact, have a share in the profits, which are invariably huge. Young people who want a drink are forced to pool their resources and shell out as much as MVR2000 approximately (US$130) for a bottle of alcohol, regardless of its make, size or contents. Where else do the bottles come from except tourism industry tycoons with a license to import them?
Today several of these tycoons are also running the government and the country. To pretend they are unaware of how much their profits are pumped up from selling alcohol to young Maldivians is a sham that any thinking person can see right through. Yet they keep up the façade so that a) they can keep making profits, and b) continue claiming that such things do not happen in a ‘100 percent Muslim country’ like the Maldives.
Fact of the matter is, Muslim or not, drinking alcohol and taking recreational drugs are as normal among a large section of the Maldivian population as it is in any other 21st century society in the world. To believe that what happens in the rest of the globalised world does not happen in the Maldives is the height of idiocy. Being such a small country with deliberately weakened cultural and historical roots has made us more, rather than less, vulnerable to global influences than most other countries. Nowhere is this more evident than in the number of Maldivian youth who have found themselves bending to the radical Islamist winds that have swept across the globe since the beginning of the century.
If we are to be honest, we have to admit that the big black burugas that so many Maldivian women have come to wear in the past decade have as little affinity with our culture and religious practises as the hot pants the women at the rave were wearing – yet the former is not just embraced but almost forced upon everyone as ‘the right thing’ while the other is criticised as ‘alien’ and even criminal.
Yes, the use of drugs are against the law. But since man began to live in societies, there has been no place on earth where youth have not bent the law for their fun and enjoyment. Their infringements—if they cause no harm to society as a whole—need to be dealt with concern and understanding, not handcuffs, brutality, and long sentences. Drug laws are meant to punish traffickers and dealers and to stop dangerous substances from becoming a menace to users and society.
Young people at a rave on a desert island, whether tripping or not, poses no threat to society whatsoever. To treat the Anbaraa revelers as criminals, to set out to publicly shame them, and to punish them with imprisonment demonstrate nothing but intolerance and ignorance. And the hypocrisy of those meting out such punishment, while happily indulging in worse behaviour themselves, boggles the mind perhaps even more than some of the substances said to have been available at Anbaraa could have.
All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to [email protected]
(0)Dislikes(0)