Munavvar believes Gayoom rules according to constitution

During the ten years Dr Munavvar served Gayoom as Attorney General, Munavvar participated in the torture and injustice inflicted on Maldivians.

In the biography of Gayoom, A Man for All Islands, Royston Ellis tries to draw the picture of Gayoom as a compassionate person.

In page 144 of the book, Ellis tries to show that Gayoom was compassionate because on different occasions he reprieved the sentences of political prisoners.

Maumoon’s brother, Abdulla Hameed,comments that the outcome demonstrates Maumoon’s honourable character. “Even if someone is his enemy, he doesn’t harbour ill feelings. He doesn’t keep deep personal feelings against someone. He forgives. It’s a quality rarely seen in a president, in anybody.”

Ellis further writes that Gayoom makes efforts to rehabilitate offenders. However, Maldivians know too well that the prison system in the country is aimed at retaining prisoners. Even young people who are arrested for small offenses such as riding a bicycle without a lamp come out of the prisons as hardcore criminals and they rarely leave prisons.

He believes in seeing that the maximum effort is made to rehabilitate offenders, and that people should not be locked away to waste their lives.

To support the claim that Gayoom is a compassionate person and not the dictator that we know, Ellis provides the wise words of Dr Munavvar in page 145 .

As President, Maumoon has the prerogative to pardon anyone, and he can draw on legal advice when doing so. He does not, however, have the right that existed in olden days of ordering someone’s banishment.

“That’s old-fashioned thinking,” Dr Muhammad Munavvar, the Attorney General, said in 1997. “Yet it still persists among some Maldivians, as though the sultan is still in power. They think the President has absolute power. He does not. He rules according to the constitution.

“The President is actually very strict that the law is adhered to whenever anyone is detained. At present a person can be detained for 15 days before a case is brought, and there must be a proper case.”

However, when Dr Munavvar was the Attorney General several people were detained in Maldives without giving proper reasons. They were kept in detention for months in violation of the regulations. Confessions were obtained from them through torture.

If Dr Munavvar believes that Gayoom rules according to the constitution then Dr Munavvar should not be heading a party that was formed to provide a decent life for Maldivians by bringing an end to the dictatorial regime of Gayoom. If Dr Munavvar believes that Gayoom does not have absolute power and does not rule as a sultan, then we should not let Dr Munavvar be a president of Maldives. Such beliefs will not doubt create another dictator.

High profile cases in which Dr Munnavar allied himself with Gayoom include the prosecution of Sandhaanu writers, the legal advice given against formation of political parties, and the prosecution of Mohamed Nasheed (Anni) for alleged theft despite a letter from the Minister of Construction of that time Umar Zahir that there was nothing useful in the premises of Velaanaage when Anni entered the place.

If you agree with us that Dr Munavvar worked as a servant of Gayoom when he was Attorney General, send this article by email to your friends, write about it in your facebook groups and write about it in your blogs. We can’t let the lies of Dr Munavvar go unchallenged.

Shady resort deals and corruption of Dr Munavvar

Dr Munavvar is the president of Maldivian Democratic Party. He does not hide his ambition to be the president of Maldives. Maldivians have to revisit the ten years Dr Munavvar spent in the Cabinet of Gayoom (1993-2003) as Attorney General and investigate the allegations of corruption against him. Only a handful of articles have been published on those allegations. When Dr Munavvar joined MDP, he was welcomed with open arms by the existing leadership of MDP with the hope that Dr Munavvar will be a potent weapon against Gayoom. However, little effort did Munavvar make against the dictatorship of Gayoom. Instead, he built a small cult within MDP using the network of his past corruption and his alliance with shady tycoons. While Dr Munavvar was maneuvering his way into MDP leadership, opposition media refrained from publishing criticisms against him. My enemy’s enemy is my friend was the notion entertained by the MDP leadership. Little did they realize that one day Dr Munavvar would attempt to erase the sacrifices made by hundreds of Maldivian reformists and prcolaim to be the defender of democracy as he and his cronies attempted during their campaign rally on April 18.

However, allegations of Dr Munavvar’s corruption were already published before he was able to secure his position within MDP. This article published in MaldivesCulture.com gives a clear understanding of how Dr Munavvar used his position in government to secure resort deals for him and his friends. The article shows how Dr Munavvar used his position as Attorney General to inflict pain and subject several Maldivians to grave injustices. That theme has been already covered by this blog. In this post we are focusing on the trail of corruption and how resorts such as Velaavaru traded hands. The article was later republished in Maldives Today, with a few comments by Free Machine.

When that article was first published in July 2004 few people took the title “Ibrahim Zaki and Dr Munavvar: Gayoom’s Ministers for MDP” seriously. However, today blogs like Real Munavvar are reinforcing the notion that Munavvar is secretly conspiring with Gayoom. Excerpts from the article from MaldivesCulture.com:

Shabeer kept only Dhunikolhu island for himself, and he gave Velaavaru island to Zaki who in turn sold it to Champa Hussain Afeef. The case of Velaavaru island is unique. Maumoon Gayyoom knew that Zaki who was the head of the Tourism Ministry’s resort awarding committee, had manipulated the process to benefit from Sunland’s gaining of the three resorts. At one point, the case became very sensitive and Zaki had to seek the help of Gayyoom’s executive secretary Abdulla Shahid and the then Attorney General Dr. Mohamed Munavvar to ensure the case was laid to rest.

Champa Afeef paid US$500,000 each to Abdulla Shahid and Dr. Munavvar to ’settle things’, and Champa offered the same amount to Zaki. But Zaki wanted more than US$500,000 dollars and after some bickering, Champa who was desperate for Velaavaru island, promised to construct Zaki’s eight-storey house complete with a swimming pool on the terrace. Now Zaki was really happy.

However, Maumoon was not happy with Zaki siphoning off the three islands for himself, perhaps because Zaki had not shared the booty with his President. This case continued to haunt Zaki and may have been one of the reasons Maumoon deciding that Zaki was out of control and consequently removing him in November 2003.

While Ibrahim Hussain Zaki was the tourism minister, a total of 14 islands of the Maldives were put up to tender to be developed as tourist resorts. Zaki made substantial gains by receiving bribes from particular resort operators and he returned the favour by using his influence to award the resort islands to them.

Zaki and his family frequently spent vacations in Lohifushi Resort at the time. The owners of the resort entertained him well. In return, DIMMS shareholders Solih and Didi each received a resort. Long after the resorts were given, Zaki continued to receive cheques from DIMMS.

Zaki’s friend Dr Mohamed Munavvar, the Attorney General at the time, also visited resorts with Zaki and had drinking parties. Munavvar has family links with the Sunland group of resort operators. Out of the 14 islands, Sunland also received islands to develop as tourist resorts.

The article gives more details of Dr Munavvar’s abuse of the Cabinet portfolio.

Munavvar as Attorney General changed a lot of things in the amended 1997 constitution to increase the President Maumoon Gayyoom’s power. When Gayyoom removed the clause which stated that the president can only have two terms, Munavvar did not oppose it. This is just one example of many things Munavvar manipulated and twisted when he was Attorney General to further his own and Gayyoom’s interests.

Munavvar can also be very petty. He once sentenced one of his neighbours to many years exile to another island, after that man who lives next door to people close to Munavvar accidentally picked a breadfruit from the ‘wrong tree’ because both breadfruit trees in the neighbouring houses had interlocking branches.

Munavvar’s relatives decided to forgive the man, but Munavvar who bore a personal grudge against the man, gave him a disproportionately long sentence. This case was reported in the Maldives media but both Maumoon Gayyoom and Munavvar ignored it. This is how Munavvar treats even the weakest among his imagined ‘opponents’. One can guess what torture he will inflict on any person who seriously politically opposes him if he is able to become Maldives’ next dictator after Gayyoom is toppled by the MDP.

One similarity between the arrogant Dr Munavvar and paranoid Maumoon Gayyoom is that they both enjoy enslaving the people who work under them. If you fail to be publicly courteous and stand up when Munavvar enters the room, he will be your enemy for life. Munavvar lacks any sense of humanity towards his fellow beings and was even snobbish towards his fellow Cabinet members.

At various times he prevented draft bills by the former Labour minister Abdulla Kamaaludhdheen from being heard or read at the People’s Majlis. (Abdulla Kamaaludhdheen is now the Fisheries minister; may Allah protect the fishing industry!)

All Maldivians know about Kamaaludhdheen’s intellectual limitations, but bills by any majlis member, regardless of whether he can read and write, at least deserve a hearing.

Gayyoom removed Munavvar from the Attorney General’s position in 2003 and offered him another post, but Munavvar declined the offer. It is believed that Gayyoom’s brother and Trade Minister Abdullah Yameen wanted both Zaki and Munavvar removed from cabinet because Yameen saw them as a threat to his own presidential dreams.

Zaki and Munavvar never belonged to the core group of the Gayyoom regime, and they had visions of gaining power in the future. Both of them criticised Gayyoom in private gatherings, but in public it was all ‘praise for Gayyoom’. Even in October 2003 during the peak of Gayyoom’s election campaign, Zaki organised a ceremony supposedly to mark an anniversary of national planning in the Maldives, and Gayyoom was invited and gave a speech with maximum publicity. Zaki had organised similar publicity campaigns for Gayyoom on many occasions.

As the Attorney General, Munavvar relentlessly prosecuted political dissidents and people with moderate Islamic beliefs who were critical of the regime. His performance at the Sandhaanu prisoners trials, on behalf of Maumoon Gayyoom, was a national and legal disgrace. At the same time, he pulled strings to free his friends who committed all sorts of criminal acts.

There is no doubt that both Zaki and Munavvar would be faithful servants in the Gayyoom regime had they not been sidelined. If they had been offered acceptable cabinet portfolios they would have remained supporters of the regime and would not have ‘defected’ to the MDP.

As Attorney General, Munavvar received an opportunity to work towards constitutional and legal reform but he did nothing with his skills and power for the betterment of Maldives and Maldivians. Instead, he defended a corrupt regime, and ended up a corrupt politician.

Maldivians will not support Zaki or Munavvar in any government that comes to power. Zaki and Munavvar were part of the backbone of Gayyoom’s corrupt and cruel system until less than a year ago.

Reference

“Ibrahim Zaki and Dr Munavvar: Gayoom’s Ministers for MDP” Article published in MaldivesCulture.com on 17 July 2004

“Gayoom’s Ministers for MDP Leadership” Blog post by Free Machine published in Maldives Today, 27 May 2007

If you agree with us that Dr Munavvar used his position in government to abuse power and engage in corruption, send this article by email to your friends, write about it in your facebook groups and write about it in your blogs. We can’t let the lies of Dr Munavvar go unchallenged.

Dr Munavvar’s prosecution of Sandhaanu writers

On 7 July 2002, one day before Writers’ Day in the Maldives, the brutal government of Gayoom slapped hard on the face of writers. The judiciary, which was functioning directly under the government as designed by the flawed constitution of 1998, sentenced three journalists to life in prison. They were convicted of writing and producing an underground electronic newsletter called Sandhaanu. Furthermore, a girl named Fathimath Nisreen was convicted to ten years in prison for alleged involvement in the production and distribution of Sandhaanu. The message to writers in Maldives was clear: no dissent against the government could be tolerated.

The men sentenced to life in prison were Ibrahim Lutfy, Ahmed Didi and Mohamed Zaki. Ibrahim Lutfy was a successful businessman from Hithadhoo, Addu Atoll. Ahmed Didi had been a political prisoner before and he had contested in the parliamentary election of 1994 against Dr Munavvar for an Addu seat. Didi was detained during the election to prevent him from winning. Didi is from Hulhudhoo, Addu Atoll. Mohamed Zaki is a successful businessman holding shares in Nazaki. He currently owns e-Sandhaanu weekly.

The circumstances under which the editors and writers of Sandhaanu were arrested and sentenced were covered by Maldivian Rebels in their underground magazine Maverick in issue 1 and issue 2.

“No defense by the prisoners or lawyers was allowed at the trial on Sunday, and Luthfee appealed to the judge to increase his sentence from 25 to 500 years, stating that it was his desire to remain in gaol until President Gayyoom was out of office. Everyone inside the court burst out laughing,” maldivesculture.com reported.

The Idhikeeli blog posted in January 2007 a well-researched article about the prosecution and sentencing of Sandhaanu writers. In the blog post Idhikeeli gives reference to a BBC article which shows how the government had tried to undermine the credibility of Sandhaanu.

The charges against them were “purely criminal and not motivated by any other reason except to enforce the penal laws” of the Maldives, a statement sent to the BBC by its High Commission in London said.

The four had been working on an electronic newsletter, Sandhaanu.

Sandhaanu “was not a newsletter registered anywhere with any authority”, the statement said. Its authors were anonymous, “proving the nature of the activities they were engaged in”.

The statement said they had been found guilty of inciting people “to violence and violent and illegal acts against a lawfully elected government and its officials”.

The flawed constitution of 1998 also gives provision for people to seek legal assistance when they are prosecuted. However, in criminal cases legal assistance from lawyers were not allowed for years after the constitution was ratified. Even though legal representation is a basic right, procedures for legal representation in criminal cases were not in place. After the constitution of 1998 was ratified, the government did not send to the Parliament several laws which had to be passed under that constitution and people’s basic rights were denied. The Attorney General of that time Dr Mohamed Munavvar simply ignored those issues and was comfortable in serving Gayoom, while legal procedures and laws that were required under the constitution were not available to the people.

The government of Maldives thought it could fool the international community by lying about the Sandhaanu case. Idhikeeli notes that “the biggest lie that was sold to the world was that Sandhaanu writers received legal representation” and gives reference to the BBC article in which BBC reports that the government of Maldives claimed that the four people had the right to be represented and assisted by a lawyer.

However, RSF’s Vincent Brossel insisted that the Maldives authorities should review the sentences.

“We found no call to violence in their newsletters,” he told BBC News Online on Wednesday.

“It’s a group of people that has always been critical of the government.

“It’s a very harsh sentence for people who have just expressed their opinions on the government policy.”

But the Maldives Government says the four were “tried in open court, and like anyone else, had the right to be represented and assisted by a lawyer and had the right and opportunity to appeal their cases”.

The Attorney General of that time Dr Munavvar was participating in Gayoom’s crimes by not ignoring the fact that the government was not sending necessary bills to the Parliament and thus obstructing the basic rights of people. In addition, his alliance with the regime of Gayoom was obvious in how the Office of the Attorney General amended the charges against Sandhaanu writers so that they were accused of treason against the state. This charge caused the judge Abdulla Areef to pass sentences of life in prison to the three men. Separate sentences were passed to them and Nisreen on defamation charges as well.

An article that was published in MaldivesCulture.com with the title “Previous Maldives Attorney-General conjured treason charge for Sandhaanu trial” included a letter by Mohamed Zaki sent to Human Rights Commission of the Maldives on 20 January 2004. The letter, which was translated into English by MaldivesCulture.com, explains how the charges were amended by the Office of the Attorney General in 2002 so that maximum sentence could be given to the writers.

People will not accept to that, overall, the claims made in Sandhaanu were acts of treason. Sandhaanu was an expression of thoughts – a guide along the path of reform.

In relation to Sandhaanu, the state prosecutor’s allegation against me was made under article 29, alleging the offence of conspiracy to commit treason. According the prevailing customs of Maldives, the judge found me guilty of the charges brought by the government. In addition to this, I received a sentence of one year’s exile for defamation, under articles 150 and 152.

I was denied my basic human rights during the investigation and the court procedure .

3. Under Chapter 2 article 15(b) of the constitution, when a person is being arrested the person should be informed of the reason for arrest. In accordance with this, at the time of my arrest I was informed it was on suspicion of spreading false information in a way that would cause loss of public peace. The police informed me of this in writing, and made me sign and fingerprint the document. But in court, the prosecuting lawyer from the Attorney General’s office presented a completely different accusation to the court. Yes, it was a charge of committing high treason!

It was surprising to see that, in reality, the government has little respect for the constitution of the country. I do not believe these are merely mistakes. After keeping me locked up in a cell in Dhoonidhoo without any access to the outside world, the only charge the state prosecutor could think of bringing against me was high treason, punishable by life imprisonment. This charge had no connection with the reason for my arrest.

Sandhaanu was a beacon of hope during the darkest days of Gayoom regime. By participating with Gayoom to conjure treason charges against the Sandhaanu cyber-dissidents, Dr Munavvar had hit hard on reformists in the Maldives. Now that Dr Munavvar is aiming to get elected for the top post in the government, he should remember the pain and suffering he had caused to several reformists in the past, and realize that the ghosts of his past are finally coming back to haunt him.

Reference

Letter sent to Human Rights Commission of the Maldives on 20 January 2004 by Mohamed Zaki, translated and published by MaldivesCulture.com on 14 April 2004

Idhikeeli blog post on prosecution and trial of Sandhaanu writers

BBC article on the sentencing of Sandhaanu writers and arguments put forward by government of Maldives

Maverick, the magazine of Maldivian Rebels, Issue 1 published June 2002
Maverick, the magazine of Maldivian Rebels, Issue 2 published August 2002
http://www.do2004.com/DO/Maverick_Resist.htm
http://www.maldivesculture.com/news/maldives_maverick_index.htm

If you agree with us that Dr Munavvar worked as a servant of Gayoom in unfairly prosecuting Sandhaanu writers, send this article by email to your friends, write about it in your facebook groups and write about it in your blogs. We can’t let the lies of Dr Munavvar go unchallenged.

Ibrahim Lutfy’s letter to Dr Munavvar

The following is a text of a letter sent by Ibrahim Lutfy to Dr Mohamed Munavvar in 1999. Lutfy gave details to Munavvar (the Maldives Attorney General that time) that the case being built against Lutfy by the Office of Attorney General had no real weight and that he was being framed by the police. He gave details of police torture that detainees undergo and mentions that it is easy for the police to obtain confession statements after beating and torturing detainees. However, in a meeting of MDP in 2005 Dr Munavvar said he had not known during his term as Attorney General that detainees were tortured by police to obtain confessions that were later used for prosecution. The letter was written in Dhivehi and has been translated into English by MaldivesCulture.com. The Dhivehi and English text of the letter has been published by Maldivian Rebels in their underground magazine Maverick issue 6. Ibrahim Lutfy is a Maldivian prisoner of conscience who was later granted political asylum by Switzerland. He was one of the editors of the underground newsletter Sandhaanu, and he was sentenced to life in prison regarding Sandhaanu in 2002. Later he fled while undergoing a treatment in Sri Lanka. His ordeals in 1999 was not related to Sandhaanu and it was only later that Sandhaanu was published. Following Maldivian custom for writing letters, Ibrahim Lutfy ended his letter of 1999 by writing ‘Khadimukum’ or ‘At your service’ which is the Maldivian equivalent of ‘Sincerely’. This letter was among hundreds of letters sent by victimised people to Dr Mohamed Munavvar during the ten years he served as Attorney General, and they ended the letters with ‘Khadimukum’. However, Dr Munavvar was not at their service; he was serving somebody else. As he had stated in the radio debate some people had benefited from his ’services’ in the Cabinet of Gayoom. However, the beneficiaries were not clearly ordinary Maldivian citizens.

From:
Ibrahim Moosa Lutfy
P.O. Box 20188
Phone: 772002

To the Attorney General Dr Mohamed Munavvar

Greetings and I would like to say,

When a person is arrested and accused of committing a crime without satisfactory evidence, it is not diffi cult to make the accused person admit to committing the offence.

First, before questioning begins, the person is beaten up without any consideration of long-term injury. Limbs are sometimes broken. If this doesn’t work, then the person’s backbone will be broken. After that, the investigator writes a statement saying whatever he likes, and gives it to the accused for signing. There is no doubt that after being subject to torture like this, the person would be willing to admit to things that he had never done.

No talent is required to conduct this sort of investigation. It is enough that the investigator has received colourful medals for bravery. In general, the public does not see police actions of the type I have described. However, we all know this kind of thing happens. We may have experienced them in films or in the news bulletins.

Should police inquiries have specific procedures and rules? Does a person being investigated have rights? Should defence evidence be destroyed? Should there be fairness when providing the protection of legal rights, when the law is applied to an accused person? If the person is subject to harm, should that person’s right to send a plea, to the authorities or to the president, be taken away? If that person is likely to be successful in defending himself, should he be chained?

Police brutality is not new to you sir. I remember very well what you said to me, in reference to police brutality, during the few meetings we had. In this situation, I am surprised and stunned by the fact that you prosecute me based on reports from investigations of this type.

I made a claim of being physically assaulted inside the Civil Court by the honourable Member of Peoples’ Majlis, Ismail Zahir (Agi house, Henveiru ward) of Kudahuvadu island, Dhaalu Atoll, and about the brutal investigation conducted by the police. Despite this information being known to you, a claim was raised against me on the same matter in court. This shocked me even more.

You have supported a bankrupt investigative system. However, I argued in defence of the claim raised against me, though your skilful prosecuting lawyer kept saying in eloquent language that I was the one who committed the assault, and that what I said had ‘no legal weight’.

When asked whether Isamil Zahir, who claimed to have been assaulted, could be summoned to the court, it was affirmed. However, in the same way the investigation was carried out, the trial was also concluded without him being summoned to the court. I was fined two hundred rufiyaa after being found guilty of the offence of battery.

In the belief that people like Dr Munavvar, who hold degrees, would know what best to do about this sort of investigation and the trial, I remained silent. My great grandfather, Faleelathul Sheikh Ibrahim Lutfy (Addu Thuththu Didi) during his time as the Attorney General of Maldives resigned from his position on a day he had to raise a particular claim in court. He refused to raise that claim. Was it because of his lack of skills and the ‘legal weight’ of his educational certificates?

Honourable Attorney General, since I appear to have woken up in a completely new world and feeling immature, I respectfully remind you about this trial because you have raised a new type of legal claim against me, and the tune of this litigation is changing. This claim of having lied about my identity; the obvious question is, what is the grave crime that I have committed here?

I am surprised and stunned. It is not possible for me to be guilty. And I do not know how to defend this sort of thing, and I don’t know when the trial will come to an end. I have been put in prison twice. I have been placed under house arrest in a rented room, twice. Since the 3rd of July I have been under detention. A third of the year is now gone. It is all because of this same problem. Neither a court of law, nor any other authority, has sentenced me, and yet I am being kept under arrest. Isn’t this a remarkable matter?

Please accept my respects,

22 October 1999

Yours sincerely,
(Lutfy’s signature)

Ibrahim Moosa Lutfy
Fenmuli house, Hithadhoo island , Seenu Atoll

To:
Office of the Attorney General
Malé, Maldives

Copy to:
To the noble presence of the President al-usthaz Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom
Head of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs
Speaker of the People’s Majlis
Members of the People’s Majlis
Members of the Cabinet
Chief Justice of Maldives
Chief Magistrate of the Criminal Court
Candidates of the General Elections 1999

Reference

Maverick, the magazine of Maldivian Rebels, Issue 6 published 19-20 September 2005
http://www.do2004.com/DO/Maverick_Resist.htm
http://www.maldivesculture.com/news/maldives_maverick_index.htm

If you agree with us that Dr Munavvar worked as a servant of Gayoom in prosecuting people based on confessions obtained through torture and later lied about it in an MDP meeting, send this article by email to your friends, write about it in your facebook groups and write about it in your blogs. We can’t let the lies of Dr Munavvar go unchallenged.