They ripped the Quran from my hands :: Maldives News :: Dhivehi Observer

Nashid Column

"They ripped the Quran from my hands, tore it and threw it away before putting a bucket on my head and kicking it."

by Dr. Ibrahim Nashid - ibrahimnash@gmail.com, G. Keneree Ge, Male', 19 December 2005

The foreign minister's statements make it clear that in the view of Gayoom's government, drug addicts are a species that do not belong to the human race and therefore do not have to be treated as such. For the torturers of Gayoom's regime, "drug addicts" are fair game and torturers often let their whole repertoire of torture methods on the "drug addicts". Anybody who attempts to hinder this or work to bring the torturers to justice is quickly branded as somebody who encourages drug abuse in our society. Drug-related crime has become a problem in our society and it is often used as a pretext by the security forces for random arbitrary arrest. This has gone so far that it has become difficult now to gauge what is drug-related crime and what is violence organized by the security forces to satisfy a sadist's hunger for torture. The time and money that could be spent on actually dealing with the drug problem is instead wasted by the police in creating more "drug addicts" and "drug dealers". The judges' complicity with the security forces have made "drug dealers" even out of minors.

Victim B was a fifteen year old boy when he was arrested by the National Security Service while he was smoking a cigarette on a street in Male'. He was interrogated for two days without a lawyer or a guardian at his side. During the interrogation Corporal Haneefa kept asking him to sign a statement stating that he dealt drugs. When he refused, male officers came into the room and beat him. When he started to cry loudly they took him out of the interrogation room and sat him on a chair outside the room. The interrogation continued when the officers thought that he had calmed down enough to continue. During one session, the interrogators threatened to throw a paperweight at him. After two days of interrogation in this manner he admitted to dealing in drugs and was sent to the children's' unit in Maafushi. After a while in Maafushi he was transferred to house arrest awaiting his sentencing.

Two years later, in 1999, when he turned seventeen according to the judge and the officers, although victim B himself denies that he was seventeen then, he was sentenced for life imprisonment and taken to Maafushi jail on the same day.

In Maafushi, he was soon transferred to a solitary confinement cell measuring 4 feet by eight feet, when he threw the food in frustration of the heavy sentence he received. In the cell he was stripped naked and beaten by Thimarafushi Shahid, Ali Mohamed, Adnaan "Papa" and Bodu Hussain. He was kept in solitary confinement for about three months and was tortured for twenty seven days continuously. According to victim B, the officers of the NSS opened his cell and did whatever they pleased and nobody questioned them. Once four officers came into the cell and put a bucket on victim B's head and kicked the bucket for a few minutes. Often victim B was taken to the beach and beaten while handcuffed and when he fell to the ground, he was pulled by the cuffs along sharp coral. He lost consciousness many times on the beach and woke up again in his cell. In one incident the guards sprayed water at very high pressure while he was tied naked to a coconut palm. According to victim B, the high pressure water made cuts on his body in various places. When he managed to untie himself and run away another group of guards caught him and beat him up.

Victim B stated that once Ali Moosa and Shifag came into his cell while he was reading the Quran and ripped it from his hands, tore it and threw it away before putting a bucket on his head and kicking the bucket. In another incident "Fucking Mode" came in and ordered victim B to lick his boots after kicking him a few times. The guards also extinguished cigarettes on victim B's genitals in one incident.

According to a witness, victim B was once ordered to run naked in front of the cells while the guards kept beating him with a rubber whip. Another witness stated that he saw victim B being tortured for eighteen hours non-stop in one session.

Victim B was sentenced while he was a minor after a grossly unfair trial without a lawyer to defend him. He never had the chance to appeal against the sentence nor was he able to appeal against the torture. After destroying his life, Gayoom released him in 2003 in a general amnesty given to all prisoners after the death of Evan Naseem. Victim B is, I believe, one of many such cases.

Instead of learning from these cases, Gayoom and his torturers are determined to carry on torturing and protecting those who have tortured before, in order to cling on to power. Recent statements from the Attorney General indicate clearly that it is not the wish of Gayoom's government to redress, nor to work in any way towards protecting the rights of the citizens. It has become clear as daylight that we can never have justice in the Maldives with Gayoom as the president.

Please send feedback and comments to ibrahimnash@gmail.com And, click here to see previous articles by Nashid