Twelve years without Rilwan: justice promised, truth withheld

A disappearance became a murder without a body or an explanation.

Artwork: Dosain

3 hours ago

It is as though Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla’s family and the country are expected to accept that he was – based solely on a seven-year-old rumour, elaborately presented in by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s Commission on Investigation of Murders and Enforced Disappearances (DDCOM).

Without any kind of evidence. Or a dead body. Or even a confirmation of death.

Twelve years after Rilwan was on 8 August 2014 and seven and a half years after Solih created the DDCOM to deliver justice for him, the country is left with allegations, unanswered questions and a demand to trust an institution that could not provide any evidence to justify that trust.

Justice for Rilwan became one of the most defining of Solih’s presidency. After years of public anger over police failures and political interference, Solih promised that his government would finally deliver accountability. The establishment of the DDCOM was one of his first major acts in office. If the appointment of members to DDCOM was itself delivery of the promise of justice, it was achieved. Justice for whom is the question. The dissolved DDCOM left behind a very different legacy: no convictions, no publicly available findings, no independent verification of its conclusions, and families still waiting for answers.

The contradictions at the heart of the DDCOM

The context of the DDCOM must also consider that the Maldives Police Service had arrested several suspects, released many of them, and the Prosecutor General charged three men in 2017 under the Anti-Terrorism Act for kidnapping and abduction. This was prior to the formation of the DDCOM. Unsurprisingly, the by the Criminal Court in 2018, highlighting serious instances of state negligence in the case.

The only reason DDCOM was needed was that public confidence in the Maldives Police Service had collapsed. No one could trust the police to conduct a professional or impartial investigation. They had been criticised for its handling of the disappearance as well as politically sensitive crimes.

In December 2018, during their first press conference, the DDCOM made some significant statements:

The Commission commenced work on 25 November 2018 and was confident that they could conclude their work by April 2019 – a period of less than six months.

That they would receive assistance from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and had received offers of support from the Western Australian Police as well as an International NGO.

The goal of their investigations was establishing due process rather than prosecution.

The contradiction in the first point is self-explanatory as we are now in the eighth year without answers since the DDCOM was established.

It is true that an NGO provided a consultant to guide the investigation; however, the Commission’s work still depended on police investigators and forensic examinations conducted by the Maldives Police Service. Given that reliance, what materially different outcome could reasonably have been expected?

For all its time and resources, the Commission's work was reduced to pursuing six people across two unsuccessful rounds of charges. Left un-investigated, or unaccounted for in any public findings, are questions surrounding allegations that go to the heart of how Rilwan's disappearance was allowed to happen and then covered up:

The role of police negligence in the original investigation.

The former judge, Immigration officials, and police involved in attempting to falsify Rilwan’s passport.

The intelligence police who tailed Rilwan before his disappearance.

The violent threats made against Rilwan's family and witnesses.

The alleged roles of senior government officials, including then-President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom, in aiding and/or protecting the perpetrators.

The issues of neglect highlighted by the Criminal Court judge in 2018 during the acquittal of three men charged in relation to Rilwan’s abduction, including mishandled chain of custody of evidence and failure to submit registration documents proving ownership of the car that was used to abduct him.

Ahmed Adeeb, Yameen's former vice president, whose phone records showed he had texted a Criminal Court judge with the names of suspects while they were in police custody – after which the judge ordered their release, which was followed by their exit from the country.

The Prosecutor General's rejection of cases related to Rilwan’s abduction and the absence of any appeal following the court-ordered release of suspects and dismissal of charges by the Criminal Court.

Exactly what about due process was investigated by the DDCOM? None of this has been answered. None of it appears to have been seriously pursued – even though the DDCOM's own December 2022 findings named former President Yameen directly and pointed to "officials of his government," a category Adeeb, as his former deputy, plainly falls into.

Both Yameen and Adeeb have denied any involvement in Rilwan's case.

Sensationalism over victims’ rights

In September 2019 – 10 months into their investigations and four months behind the promised conclusion of cases – the DDCOM held another major press conference and made some extraordinary statements:

The investigation into the enforced disappearance of Rilwan was close to completion.

Evidence, corroborated by witness statements, point to Rilwan having been forced onto a boat and murdered at sea.

Rilwan’s murder was premeditated, connected to the murders of Dr Afrasheem Ali and Yameen Rasheed, and linked to an Islamic extremist group. In fact, Al-Qaeda was named.

While the mention of Al-Qaeda attracted almost all the attention to the case, what we observed is how, from this point onwards, the enforced disappearance of Rilwan was referred to as a murder case.

The last public account provided by the DDCOM in December 2022, was the most sensational. They said that:

Rilwan had been abducted, forced onto a boat, murdered, and dropped into the ocean.

It named six suspects, all of whom, it claimed, had travelled to Syria to fight and died there – although no record of their deaths exists.

It alleged connections between the case and former President Yameen and officials in his government.

The rumour that Rilwan had been murdered at sea – this is not new information. In fact, the rumour had begun circulating on social media from as early as 2016, before any investigation had been concluded. It was also what the DDCOM said in September 2019. When the family requested information about whether this claim was made based on any kind of evidence, the DDCOM remained silent. As for the claim that the suspects of Rilwan’s "murder" had been killed in a foreign war, it appears convenient at best.

Shortly after the DDCOM’s dramatic press conference, Rilwan’s family went to the Commission to request an official document confirming his death. They did this so they could perform his funeral rites and resolve judicial matters relating to his inheritance, debts and other obligations. It is worth noting that the family went to the Commission themselves; they were not invited by the Commission.

The DDCOM had the audacity to simply say no, that was not going to be possible. No reason was provided.

Enforced disappearance or murder?

The forcible disappearance of Rilwan was initially treated as a terrorism offence until the accused were acquitted in 2018. At the DDCOM, it was quietly turned into a murder investigation. This is not without consequence, and it is a subject addressed by international frameworks.

A critical distinction between disappearance and murder from the perspective of investigations is made, for example, within the International Commission of Jurists Practitioners’ Guide No.9. The guide cites the Inter-American Court’s reasoning that the defining feature separating disappearance from murder or abduction is the refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or to disclose the person’s fate. The court stresses that what makes a disappearance legally distinct isn’t the act of taking someone, but rather the ongoing concealment and denial of information afterward. A murder is complete once the killing occurs; but a disappearance persists precisely because that information is withheld.

Article 2 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, signed by the Maldives in 2007 and ratified in 2023, says:

"'Enforced disappearance' is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law."

That is exactly what happened to Rilwan. What has followed his abduction to this day is not a botched investigation. It is the deliberate destruction of truth under cover of state power. Then-President Yameen his Home Minister Umar Naseer not to be overwhelmed by the case. As easily as he later in a public broadcast that "Rilwan is dead" and moved right on to other business. His government went on to preside over an investigation so negligent, so compromised, and so politically convenient that critical evidence is now lost forever. The Maldives Police Service delayed the search, ignored key evidence, and let disinformation flourish – including the vile suggestion that Rilwan had simply . It is the very ideology that Rilwan was abducted for opposing!

The same pattern of evasion continues today. Only, instead of hostility, it is wrapped in intentional neglect and refusal to acknowledge. President Dr Mohamed Muizzu, when he inherited Rilwan’s case, had one simple responsibility: disclose the DDCOM’s findings to the public, and most importantly, to the families of the victims. Muizzu promised to disclose the DDCOM’s report in May 2024. More than two years later, we continue to wait.

Six suspects: three failed indictments and three dismissed charges

On 3 December 2019 – eight months after the promised date of conclusion – the DDCOM requested the Prosecutor General’s Office to press charges against three individuals in connection to the cases of Dr Afrasheem’s and Yameen Rasheed’s murders, and the disappearance of Rilwan. The Prosecutor General rejected the cases four weeks later, citing inadequate investigation. The DDCOM was asked to resubmit the cases after completing investigation. None were satisfactorily resubmitted.

Three and a half years after the promised conclusion date, on 1 August 2022, the DDCOM requested the Prosecutor General’s Office to press charges against a different set of three individuals – on different grounds.

What happened to the first three?

The Prosecutor General’s Office did press charges against the second set of three suspects, approximately three weeks after the request. The preliminary hearings of the cases were held in-camera, so no details are available. In November 2023, the Criminal Court dismissed charges against all three suspects citing "insufficient evidence." This was not a surprise, seeing how interconnected institutions and people were in relation to the case, according to statements made by the DDCOM at various press conferences. The immediate question that followed the court’s decision was whether, or rather when, the decision to dismiss would be appealed at the High Court. According to the DDCOM, the Prosecutor General said there was still time to make that decision. Eventually the Prosecutor General’s Office decided not to appeal the dismissals. No justification was provided as to why they would not appeal the dismissal if they had legal grounds to press charges in the first place.

This, too, is unsurprising, given that the Prosecutor General’s Office refused to appeal the court’s earlier decision to release the suspects from remand.

Solih’s reward for the men his own commission implicated

Here is the part that should trouble anyone still willing to give Solih’s government the benefit of the doubt. Even as his own DDCOM was naming former President Yameen and officials of his government as connected to Rilwan’s disappearance, Solih’s administration was simultaneously easing the legal consequences faced by the two top men of that administration.

Yameen’s Vice President Adeeb – who is alleged to have facilitated the escape of two suspects connected not only to Rilwan’s case but also to Dr Afrasheem Ali’s murder, and had already had an earlier set of convictions cleared after Solih took office in 2018 – was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2020 on corruption charges tied to the MMPRC scandal. He served that sentence largely under house arrest on medical grounds. Then, four days before leaving office in November 2023, Solih granted Adeeb clemency and reduced the 20 years to just a few days – thereby considering the sentence served. Adeeb left the country within days and has lived abroad since. The move stood in stark contradiction to Solih's "zero tolerance to corruption" pledge.

The same former president that DDCOM had implicated in Rilwan’s case, Abdulla Yameen, fared similarly well under Solih. After being convicted of corruption in December 2022, Yameen was transferred from prison to house arrest in October 2023 – an order Solih signed on his way out at the explicit request of President-Elect Muizzu. In April 2024, the High Court overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial.

In the final weeks of a presidency built on the promise of justice for Rilwan, the outgoing government pardoned one man his own Commission had implicated and eased the sentence of another. Whatever intention lay behind those decisions, the outcome speaks for itself: the men named by the DDCOM did not end up facing accountability. They ended up walking free.

Today, we are not merely back where we began. We are further behind. The evidence, the findings, and whatever truth the state claims to possess have been refused to the public, sealed inside a confidential report, and placed under the control of President Muizzu, whose own record has turned disclosure into yet another political promise broken. In a case built on years of concealment, the continued refusal to release that report is not administrative delay. It is a political choice to protect power from accountability.

is a human rights defender supporting Rilwan's family. She is the founder and executive director of the Maldivian Democracy Network and the secretary general of FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights), a global movement of nearly 200 human rights organisations.

All comment pieces are the sole view of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of the Maldives Independent. If you would like to write an opinion piece, please send proposals to editorial@maldivesindependent.com.

Discussion

No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

No comments yet. Be the first to join the conversation!

Join the Conversation

Sign in to share your thoughts under an alias and take part in the discussion. Independent journalism thrives on open, respectful debate — your voice matters.