Rilwan's family to seek charges against ex-minister over false accusations
Rilwan was last seen purchasing a ticket to the Hulhumalé ferry from capital city Malé, on 8 August 2014
Former Home Minister Umar Naseer
The family of murdered journalist Ahmed Rilwan has decided to seek charges against former Minister of Home Affairs Umar Naseer.
Speaking to RaajjeMV, Rilwan’s sibling Fathmath Shehenaz revealed that Umar Naseer had accused of Rilwan being a part of a group of a religious extremist group, while speaking on live TV in an appearance on Sangu TV.
As such, Naseer is to have said that "a bearded" Rilwan was seen roaming around with head scarfs and his pants rolled up.
While Shehenaz admitted that her brother "was for a short time connected to a radical group", she stressed that Rilwan had left them after learning of the group's ideologies.
Noting that Rilwan had not acted the way Naseer had described, Shehenaz revealed work to file a case against the former minister for spreading false information. She said that updates of the case will be shared with the media.
During the said live programme, Naseer is to have alleged that prior to becoming a journalist, Rilwan had been a part of an extremist group in the Maldives. The ex-minister revealed that a lot of people may not be aware of this, but that Rilwan was associated with such a group.
Rilwan was last seen purchasing a ticket to the Hulhumalé ferry from capital city Malé, on 8 August 2014. Two years later in 2016, the police had confirmed that Rilwan was abducted and that one of the men caught trailing Rilwan on CCTV footage had been identified as Mohamed Suaid, who was arrested but released by the Criminal Court in November 2014. He has since been pronounced dead in battle after having left to Syria shortly being released from remand.
Two men accused of abducting Rilwan were acquitted in 2018; one of these suspects is the owner of the red car believed to have been used to abduct the journalist, with investigators saying that DNA analysis of hairs lifted from the trunk of the car matched that of Rilwan’s mother.
The Commission on Disappearances and Deaths Commission confirmed that Rilwan was killed by an extremist group in 2019.
The commission has also linked Rilwan’s murder to two other high-profile murders in the Maldives; the 2012 murder of Ungoofaaru MP Dr. Afrasheem Ali and the 2017 murder of blogger and social media activist Yameen Rasheed.
Earlier, DDCom also sought assistance in information related to a knife they found outside of Rilwan’s apartment building in Hulhumalé. The knife is believed to have been dropped by his attackers during the abduction. Rilwan was forced inside a red car, outside of his house; back in July, DDCom released a reenactment video of the abduction.
