Foreign expert to join Rilwan’s murder investigation “soon”

An international expert will arrive in the Maldives “soon” to join the investigation into the disappearance and murder of journalist Ahmed Rilwan.

While Rilwan’s family has been asking authorities to seek assistance from an international expert in the investigation, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih back in August said that they were working to bring in a respectable foreign investigator to assist in the case.

Speaking to RaajjeMV on the matter on Monday, Chief Communications Strategist at the President’s Office Ibrahim Hood said that this investigator “will arrive in a few days”.

However, he did not disclose any further details, including the nationality of the investigator or a possible arrival date.

Serving justice in Rilwan’s murder case is one of the key electoral pledges of the incumbent president.

While Rilwan was last seen in August 2014, police confirmed his abduction two years later in 2016. President Solih formed the commission on murders and enforced disappearances in November 2018, to investigate such cases.

There were various attempts to conceal the truth behind Rilwan’s disappearance, including attempts to falsify travel documents in Rilwan’s name, to make it appear that the missing journalist had died after leaving the country to participate in a conflict overseas.

Back in September 2019, it was finally revealed that Rilwan was killed by an extremist group, by the presidential commission.

The commission, in December 2018, said that investigations showed links between Rilwan’s murder and two other high profile murders in the country; the 2012 murder of parliamentarian Dr. Afrasheem Ali, and the 2017 stabbing of Rilwan’s best friend and democracy activist Yameen Rasheed.