Former Minister of Islamic Affairs Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari has called on the government and incumbent President Abdulla Yameen to stop their ‘harassment of political detainees’.

Bari said that detained ex-president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and Supreme Court justices Abdulla Saeed and Ali Hameed are kept waiting for hours before their hearings is a form of harassment, carried out at the direct orders of senior government officials.

Further, Bari said that the government has centralized power so as to pass vague laws that can be used to target their political rivals and had denounced this as unjust and therefore un-Islamic.

He also said that President Abdulla Yameen’s justification for imposing a drawn-out state of emergency in the Maldives that led to the unfair arrest and detention of hundreds of pro-democratic activists is inadequate.

The former minister and famed religious scholar is also a founding member of the Adhaalath Party and made these remarks during his address at an opposition rally in Rasdhoo island of Alif Alif atoll on Friday night.