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Maafushi island brutality creating 'explosive situation' in Maldives says escaped political prisoner Maldives Culture special report 31 May 2003
Trouble in Maldive prisons contributed to the fall of the previous president of Maldives Ibrahim Nasir in the 1970s, after the torture of detainess during large-scale political unrest. In the last few days, Luthfee has contacted the Maldives High Commission in Sri Lanka and warned them not to spread false stories about him to embassies or the media. In 2002 the Maldives government supplied fraudulent information to Interpol, and the Malaysian police in Kuala Lumpur arrested several Sandhaanu writers in the belief they were members of a Maldive Al-Qaeda cell. There is no credible evidence that Luthfee and his fellow writers were in any way involved with Al-Qaeda. Luthfee told this website that he had been tortured at Maafushi after being caught with a watch he kept for prayer times. Luthfee prayed regularly to sustain himself during his ordeal, rejecting the drugs commonly used by other prisoners. He was chained to a railing for eleven days after the watch was found. His eyesight was affected and he suffered continual ringing in his ears. Luthfee says Maafushi prison conditions are getting worse because the NSS is not interested in other methods of control apart from brute force, torture and intimidation. Prisoners taken after disturbances on Naifaru island in August 2001 were tortured at Maafushi with fire and forced to sign confessions, according to Luthfee, and he believes some of them were completely innocent of any violent acts during the revolt. He regrets that he is unable to give a first-hand account of the conditions experienced by Sri Lankan prisoners at Maafushi, because they were kept in a separate section of the jail. Luthfee's escape from two NSS officers in Colombo Sri Lanka, where he had been taken for medical treatment, adds to the problems at the Maldives High Commission there. Mohamed Zahir, the Maldives' senior intelligence officer in Sri Lanka, died suddenly this month. He was the brother of Adam Zahir, the police commissioner in Malé, and Mohamed was married to Muslima, one of President Gayyoom's younger sisters. At the commission's Colombo office, Mohamed Zahir ran a vigorous NSS spying operation on Maldivians visiting and residing in Sri Lanka. Several years ago, the NSS took over the Maldives Department of Immigration, previously under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Senior NSS officials thought it would be easier to collect intelligence, carry out surveillance, and control movements of people if they had direct control over immigration and emigration. Mohamed Zahir headed liason with the Sri Lankan National Intelligence Bureau and Criminal Investigation Department, and this close co-operation continued without hindrance under Chandrika Kumaratunga's presidency, until the election of the new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The NSS have been at liberty to detain and even extradite Sri Lankans suspected of infringing Maldive interests. No extradition treaty exists between Maldives and Sri Lanka, but Sri Lankan citizens are regularly removed illegally to Malé NSS headquarters. The NSS is free to hunt Maldive political activists in Sri Lanka too, despite their activities being allowed under Sri Lankan and Maldive law. In 1995, the NSS, assisted by the Sri Lanka CID, arrested Riko Ibrahim Maniku a Maldivian who had nominated himself for president in 1983. Riko ran a shipping agency, and his lobbying of Majlis members upset the Gayyoom regime. His associates were arrested and detained when Riko himself happened to be in Sri Lanka. He fled overseas from there, but returned a few years later and was lured into a trap by an undercover NSS officer, Suleymen, who posed as a cleaner at the Maldives High Commission in Colombo. Riko was illegally arrested, taken to Maldives and remains imprisoned. Mohamed Zahir organised Riko's capture, with the help of Abdul Azeez Yousuf the present Maldive deputy minister of home affairs. Maldivians living in Sri Lanka are disappointed with censorship and the lack of political and legal reform in Malé, and they resent being harrassed by the High Commission's spies. As peace returns to Sri Lanka, the dictatorial system in Maldives is likely to find itself under increasing criticism from a more self-assured and tolerant government in Colombo.
The Sinhala language press has reported the concerns of the families and friends of the Sri Lankan prisoners, that prisoners are being framed by the Maldive NSS police and that all police actions, including concocted statements, are simply rubberstamped by the Maldive courts, regardless of the law. The lack of genuine legal procedures in Maldives, to protect what Sri Lankans regard as basic statutory and human rights, will continue to be a source of tension and disagreement between the two nations until serious, not cosmetic, reforms are made in Maldives. 'Courts and places are not up to date,' says a Maldivian writing to this site. 'A political detainee has no choice other than to represent himself in the court. This is like expecting sick people to treat themselves. When foreigner's are faced with these problems, they complain in their own countries. Then the Maldive regime tries to hide these realities, which of course cannot be hidden.There are so many mistakes.' |
Maldives Culture is an independent internet magazine of Maldivian cultural issues.
Editors and translators: Michael O'Shea and Fareesha Abdulla, Australia
We invite contributions from Maldivians and others interested in Maldives.
Contributions and comments - mc_editors@hotmail.com
