Government sincerity questioned as Yameen Rasheed’s murder unresolved after nine years

After the convictions of the two people charged with this crime were overturned late last year, his family is reiterating calls for full disclosure of the presidential inquiry’s findings - two years after it says this was promised by President Dr Mohamed Muizzu. 

The Association for Democracy in the Maldives (ADM) - formed by the families of Yameen and his friend Ahmed Rilwan, who was disappeared in 2014 - condemned successive governments’ handling of the case. 

“The delay of over two years in disclosing the information raises serious questions about the sincerity of the government in this matter,” read an ADM statement, saying the attorney general had provided assurances the government would not withhold the information. “Together with the family of Yameen Rasheed, we call on the government of Maldives to fully disclose the findings of the Presidential Commission on Deaths and Disappearances.”

Following a series of attacks and abductions during the presidency of Abdulla Yameen, a presidential commission - also known as DDCOM - was formed by President Ibrahim Solih in 2018. The commission was dissolved when President Muizzu took office and the investigation transferred to the police, prompting continued unease from the ADM. 

“This development raises concerns regarding the impartiality of these investigations, given that the DDCOM was originally established due to a lack of confidence in the Maldives Police Service’s ability to conduct professional inquiries into these particular cases,” read today’s statement. “To date, the Maldives Police Service has not released any information about the status of ongoing investigations concerning the murder of Yameen Rasheed.”

The two men originally convicted - Ismail Haisham Rasheed and Ahmed Zihan Ismail - remain in custody during their retrial, while the High Court has also reversed the acquittal of two alleged accomplices, Mohamed Dhifran and Ismail Rasheed.

Yameen’s sister Aisha Rasheed told the Maldives Independent she hopes the courts will deliver justice, despite no hearings being held since February. “I want to believe that they will do the right thing,” she said, expressing hope that the intervening years may have given people more empathy with her brother’s stance. “I think now people would have a better understanding of what he stood for and why they took him out,” Aisha said, but added: “I think the world moves on and people forget”.

The six suspects originally charged were Ismail Haisham Rasheed, Ahmed Zihan Ismail, Mohamed Dhifran, Hassan Shifaz, Ismail Rasheed and Hussein Ziyad. The criminal court convicted Haisham and Zihan on January 19, 2022, with both sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay MVR1.3 million (US$84,000) in compensation, or diya. The rest were acquitted. 

President Solih established DDCOM after making election pledges to seek justice for Yameen and the Maldives Independent journalist Rilwan, who was abducted from outside his home in Hulhumalé on August 8, 2014. Muizzu’s administration dissolved DDCOM on May 31, 2024, without publishing findings or securing further convictions. Progress on the commission’s work into Rilwan’s case had been reversed the previous November when the criminal court dropped terrorism charges against three suspects, one of whom was subsequently appointed to a senior post at a state-owned company.

The ADM said that, in the same month in which DDCOM was dissolved, President Muizzu had informed the media that the findings would be published “very soon”. At this time, ADM had been joined by a coalition of NGOs, including Transparency Maldives, the International Federation for Human Rights and Reporters Without Borders to call on DDCOM and Muizzu to ensure the findings were made public before the commission’s dissolution. They also asked the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives to intervene, though DDCOM said it had been instructed to share its findings only with the President’s Office.

Attorney General Ahmed Usham informally told civil society actors he was in charge of publishing the report, claimed the ADM, telling them the government had no intention of withholding any information. Government delegations to various human rights reviews of the Maldives by the UN, headed by the attorney general, have repeatedly said the government had no intention of withholding the information.

After Haisham and Zihan appealed their case to the High Court, their convictions were overturned on December 31, 2025. The court ordered a retrial and moved to release Haisham and Zihan before the Prosecutor General's Office successfully sought a detention order. The High Court also reversed acquittals for alleged accomplices Dhifran and Ismail Rasheed, sending their cases back to the criminal court. 

The lower court was instructed to verify whether a secret witness had been coerced by police to identify suspects, as claimed in a letter purportedly from the witness, and to determine the credibility of testimony from witnesses who identified Yameen’s masked assailants. On February 16, the criminal court began the retrial, live-streamed on YouTube. It said only one additional hearing was planned, noting the time the accused had been held in custody, but a scheduled hearing on February 26 did not take place.