On the anniversary of the bomb attack on former president Mohamed Nasheed, the ruling party, the parliament, the speaker’s legal counsel, his family and the president’s special envoy raised concerns over the inability to identify the financiers of the failed assassination attempt.
“There are legitimate concerns in the Maldives that the May 6 attack could not have been planned and executed without encouragement and financial support from outside the current circle of suspects,” observed Abbas Faiz, a former Amnesty International official who has been monitoring the investigation and prosecution of the terror attack. The special envoy also expressed concern that the trials of the terror suspects “have not kept pace with the time-bound momentum of the investigation and prosecution.” A prime suspect, Adhuham Ahmed Rasheed, 26, who confessed to detonating the IED, was sentenced to 23 years in jail last December.
President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih called the attack “one of the worst acts of terrorism on Maldivian soil” and pledged to “bring those responsible for this crime to justice.”
The police appealed for public assistance in searching for seven men suspected of involvement in gang violence. Four men were stabbed in two gang fights in Malé on Monday morning.
Two gang fights occurred within 20 minutes of each other in Hulhumalé on Wednesday night. Two men received treatment for injuries. Six suspects have since been taken into custody, according to the police.
Four suspects were also arrested in the early hours of Thursday morning in connection with an attempted assault in Sosun Magu in Malé.
The resurgence in gang violence in the capital comes after a long hiatus.
Coastguard divers covered a length of 1,000 meters along the Fuvahmulah reef at a depth of 85 meters in the search for Mohamed Saeed, 44, a diver who went missing on Monday afternoon. An 18-year-old who went diving with Saeed at the southern island’s famous tiger shark point is reportedly undergoing treatment at the decompression chamber in Kuredu resort.
O’ Level exams began for 5,939 students at 239 centres across the country. The final papers are scheduled for 10 June.
The annual exams were previously held in October and November. The start of the academic year was changed to August after postponements forced by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
After steady progress since the change of government in 2018, the Maldives dropped 15 spots in the Reporters Without Borders annual press freedom index, sliding from the rank of 72nd in the world in 2021 to 87th in 2022.
“Advertising is allocated without any transparency or oversight, which poses serious problems for the independence of media outlets. In several cases, media outlets with no significant readership received large sums of money from state enterprises. In return, the editors were told to remove an article that had caused displeasure or were asked not to cover a sensitive subject,” RSF cited as the main factors for the decline.
A group calling themselves ‘Maldives Youth Force’ protested outside former president Abdulla Yameen’s residence, calling for the opposition leader’s imprisonment and condemning his ‘India Out’ campaign as “a racist agenda of one person to create hate, racism and fear”. Verbal clashes erupted between the youth group and opposition supporters who gathered in the area.
The protesters were reportedly aligned with Yameen’s former vice president Ahmed Adeeb, including former civil court judge Mohamed Haleem.
A 35-year-old man was arrested after biting off the tip of a woman’s finger on Gaaf Alif Villingili island. In addition to the 39-year-old woman, a 74-year-old man and two women aged 31 and 60 were also injured, police told the media. The island’s magistrate court ordered the suspect to be remanded in custody for the duration of his trial. He was also sentenced to 150 days for contempt of court.
After a break of two years due to the pandemic, Eid prayers took place in a mass congregation at the Maafanu stadium in Malé.
President Solih announced a promised pay rise for 8,889 staff in the education sector. Teachers with graduate degrees will earn MVR19,400 (US$1,250) a month – up from MVR12,000 – under the new salary structure, a figure that exceeds the previous take-home pay with overtime allowances.
Wages doubled for principals and leading teachers in some island schools, the education minister explained at a press briefing.
Chinese ambassador Wang Lixin dismissed former president Nasheed’s allegations of China grabbing land and dragging the Maldives into a debt trap as “pure slander”.
Nasheed, who is also the speaker of parliament and president of the ruling party, contends that projects were carried out at inflated costs and were designed to allow China to demand an ownership stake, allegations that have been angrily denied by the rising superpower.
“China wanted to create autocracy and remove democracy from Maldives, set up a dictatorship and then do whatever they wanted to,” Nasheed was quoted as saying during a lecture moderated by former foreign secretary Shyam Saran last week, claims that he also repeated In interviews with Indian media. Nasheed insisted that the value of the assets created by Chinese debt is “not even a third of the value” and called for loan restructuring.
Former ambassador to Germany Ahmed Latheef was appointed as the new foreign secretary. Former foreign secretary Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed was made an ambassador-at-large.
