NIC to publicize report on last month's prison scuffle

National Integrity Commission (NIC) will be publicizing the report on the scuffle that took place in Maafushi Prison last month.

Members of the commission revealed this after being summoned to the parliament’s committee on independent institutions on Wednesday.

At the meeting, NIC President Ahmed Sulaiman dismissed media reports that the commission’s work is moving at a slow progress.

Noting that the commission wants to ensure that their investigations are conducted in a just manner, Sulaiman said that they have completed investigations into over a hundred of the 460 cases submitted.

When questioned on NIC’s work regarding the prison scuffle, the NIC president said that they have concluded the investigation into the matter and that their report will be publicized “soon.”

However, he did not specify a date on when this will be done.

The prison brawl, which took place June 20, is to have started after an inmate attacked an officer.

While reports soon surfaced that prison officers had used excessive force against inmates to control the situation, authorities revealed that the responding officers had acted unlawfully and that this had instead escalated the situation.

Prisoner of Commissions Abdulla Munaz was summoned to the committee on national security and foreign relations over the matter.

The commissioner said that he had initially believed that the inmates had sustained injuries from the attempt to control the situation, but that upon initial inspection learned that they "should not have sustained injuries to such extent” in such an operation.