An unjustly jailed dictator

There were scenes of jubilation among some.

Aminath Athifa* and her brothers jumped up in celebration, high-fiving each other, as the ageing dictator was taken away in a police launch. “Now he can get a taste of his own medicine,” said her brother.

But Athifa’s father, who was brutally tortured under Gayoom and hasn’t divulged the gory details, is more muted. “If my children knew what happened to me, the hatred will go on for generations,” he says. In some families it is not the victims of Gayoom’s abuse who harbour the biggest grudges but their children, whose lives were scarred by their father’s absence.