Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen is tomorrow to lift a 45-day state of emergency and the government is to file bribery charges against former Maldivian president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and the chief justice, a senior Maldivian diplomat said.
Yameen imposed a state of emergency on Feb. 5 for 15 days to annul a Feb. 1 Maldivian Supreme Court ruling that quashed convictions against nine opposition leaders and ordered his government to free those held in prison.
He later extended the state of emergency for another 30 days with the approval of the legislature, a move challenged by the opposition.
Under the state of emergency, Yameen’s administration arrested Gayoom, the chief justice, another Supreme Court judge and a Supreme Court administrator on allegations of attempting to overthrow the government.
They have all rejected the charges.
“Unless something unusual happens, we should not have emergency by Thursday,” Maldivian Ambassador to Sri lanka Mohamed Hussain Shareef told a Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Sri Lanka forum on Monday.
“The government has no intention of extending it any further barring very unusual circumstances, like widespread violence. The intention is to do away with this state of emergency when the current 30 day period expires on March 22,” Shareef said.
Bribery charges against Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed and Supreme Court Judge Ali Hameed have been sent to the prosecutor general, Shareef said, adding that bribery charges would also be filed against Gayoom and Supreme Court administrator Hassan Sayeed.
“That is definite. We know that charges will be pressed against the four of them,” Shareef said.
Gayoom is accused of bribing the three legal professionals to overthrow the Yameen government.
Despite opposition claims that hundreds of people have been arrested under the state of emergency, Shareef said only 38 had been arrested so far, while others were “detained and released.”
Maldivian police on Saturday told reporters that at least 139 opposition protesters were arrested as they attempted to defy orders under the state of emergency and march into a high-security zone in capital, Male.
Asked if any foreign agent or country had a role in the crisis, Shareef said: “For my knowledge, the investigations at the moment are focused on local actors only.”
Rights group Amnesty International has said the Maldivian government was using the emergency “as a license for repression, targeting members of civil society, judges and political opponents.”
Yameen’s government retains a majority in the legislature in the absence of the opposition’s 12 lawmakers, who were stripped of their seats by Yameen’s party for defecting last year.
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