:: Dhivehi Observer :: Peoples Press ::

Maldives appoints top spy and torturer as Delhi ambassador

by DO international editor, Michael O'Shea - 26 October 2004
Parts of this article have appeared earlier in Maldives Culture

Anbaree Abdul Sattar

Anbaree Abdul Sattar, the newly appointed Maldives ambassador to India, has operated his own intelligence network for years within the National Security Service (NSS) on behalf of President Maumoon Gayyoom, and there is no reason to suppose his network has been dismantled.

Anbaree's move to Delhi places a senior NSS spy in the middle of the region's most important diplomatic community. Many Maldivians believe Anbaree is unfit for public office, and his appointment to this prestigious position is an insult to Maldives' largest neighbour.

In his home country, the new ambassador to India has been conspiring to commit violent crimes for over two decades. He has been complicit at the highest level in state-ordered violence resulting in murder, torture and rape in Maldives jails under his personal command. With Anbaree Abdul Sattar as its senior operational commander, the NSS has become the most powerful criminal and political organisation in Maldives.

On 11 November 1978, Gayyoom arranged the transfer of people he trusted to the NSS from other government departments, according to Royston Ellis' 1998 biography of Gayyoom (see pp. 123-4). 'One of these men was Anbaree Abdul Satar, then the Deputy Director of Air Maldives the country's fledging airline,' writes Ellis. (Ellis is probably referring to the airports authority of Maldives.)

State Minister for Defence and National Security and deputy Commander-in-Chief of the NSS, Anbaree Abdul Sattar was second in military ranking only to Gayyoom until 1 September 2004 when he received diplomatic status. For 26 years he was a vital part of Gayyoom's secret punishment and torture practices, and he became actively responsible for the overall administration of all NSS functions.

Gayyoom 'told us he wanted educated people in the NSS to improve its efficiency and image,' said Anbaree to Ellis. ' He wanted proper training and placed much emphasis on the development of human resources.'

Ellis expresses surprise that Gayyoom moved so quickly to build up the NSS; receiving help from Iraq, Libya and Kuwait, and later 'from many countries including the USA, UK, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well as Indonesia, New Zealand and the Philippines.'

Anbaree Abdul Sattar was one of the few top officers allowed to enter and sign torture orders in the Punishment Books that amounted to thousands of pages when they were secretly removed from NSS headquarters and delivered to Police Chief Adam Zahir's house in the early 1990s.

Torture and executions occurred regularly in Maldives jails during the 1980s when few foreigners knew of these practices. NSS informants say the abuses were even worse than the horrors of the last 15 years.

Last week Dhivehi Observer revealed the use of 'saw cuffs' (kees bidi), which slowly bite into victims' midriffs and kill them. Sceptics should ask themselves why these ghastly contraptions have a Dhivehi name.

From the beginning of their rule in 1978, Gayyoom and his NSS allies gave top priority to the suppression of political reformers. Ilyas Hussein is currently an elected member of the constitutional majlis and has been imprisoned in Dhoonidhoo jail without charge for over two months. In 1984, young Hussein was arrested and taken from his home at night. After being kept waiting at the police station for hours, he was interrogated by Anbaree Abdul Sattar and the feared Isthafaa Ibrahim Manik about an article titled, 'The Strengthening of Democracy under a Leader', which Ilyas Hussein had written for a magazine published by the Maldives Student Association of Pakistan.

Torture practices ordered and assisted by Anbaree include solitary confinement with no room to lie down in cells where temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius, handcuffing for months, and four limbs cuffed and tied for maximum discomfort.

Anbaree's men put prisoners in stocks where the victim is restrained with his or her ankles and wrists locked in tiny holes in a block of wood. The victim remains bent and does not have the use of his/her hands when eating. Defecation and urination is done on the spot and the victim remains with his or her own human waste for days on end. Victims of the stocks almost invariably suffer from spinal conditions for life, if they survive this ordeal.

Anbaree was complicit in orders to hang prisoners by the arms, legs, fingers and toes. Under his command, the NSS using a bulldozer to haul cuffed and tied victims on top of a sand dune about 2-3 metres high and making them roll down on a base of sharp stone chips. This procedure was carried out repeatedly for hours.

Anbaree Abdul Sattar was complicit with orders to torture with electric shock. The victim is made to stand on a sheet of corrugated iron and low voltage electricity is applied.

Anbaree was complicit in the gang rape of women prisoners. Sometimes other women inmates are forced to watch this in order to inflict psychological torture on them. The witnesses sometimes committed suicide.

Anbaree was complicit in orders to urinate and defecate on victims. Very senior personnel in attendance at the torture usually carry this out while the victim is undergoing another method of torture.

'Mounting on the angle' was used during Anbaree's administration. The victim's arms are passed backwards through the vertical bars, about 60 cm apart, of the vent above the door in a prison cell. The wrists are then tightly handcuffed. The body is left dangling for hours at a time. The victim almost invariably has both shoulders and/or elbows dislocated during this torture.

Indiscriminate beating was a favourite punishment of Anbaree's. Officials wearing military-style boots stomp on the victim. Victims are sometimes left paralysed for life.

Lashing prisoners to trees in front of cell blocks was another punishment popular with Anbaree. Female victims are left in various degrees of nakedness. Prisoners were also forced to stand on a chair for hours with arms outstretched and a heavy object in each palm. Other prisoners were made to squat on their toes, with a length of timber between the upper and lower legs, tightly tucked behind the knee. The weight of the body results in the slow and painful dislocation of the knee.

Hassan Eevaan Naseem -
murdered in Maafushi jail September 2003

In September 2003, a group of young NSS officers under Anbaree's direct command murdered Evaan Naseem in Maafushi prison. His death and the subsequent shooting and death of unarmed prisoners at the prison the next day led to a riot in Male' where the crowd attacked and beat NSS officers and burnt the Elections Commission building and other government property including NSS vehicles, trashed High Court records, and stoned the Majlis building.

On the morning of Friday 13 August 2004, two weeks before he officially retired from the Defence Department, Anbaree Abdul Sattar was with the senior NSS at dawn, planning the details of their assault on Male' that afternoon. Adam Zahir came to the NSS headquarters around 4 am with two security guards running alongside his car. Anbaree arrived before 5 am. Mohamed 22 Zahir was already there with Moosa Jaleel.

The NSS used paid provocateurs to attack peaceful demonstrators and on-duty officers committed arson on a public building. Acting on orders arranged by Gayyoom, Anbaree, Mohamed 22 Zahir and Adam Zahir, the NSS systematically beat non-violent people all over Male' and dragged prominent reformists and their families from their houses. The arrested people were beaten viciously with wood and metal instruments and locked in solitary confinement. They were tortured and sometimes raped and poisoned. Many of them have still not been released.

Anbaree Abdul Sattar and Aneesa Ahmed
The violence that saturates Anbaree's career has been apparent in at least one personal relationship as well. Angry about rumours of an affair between his then wife Aneesa Ahmed and another prominent Maldivian man, Anbaree in full military uniform attacked Aneesa and kicked her with his army boots, fracturing her pelvis. Aneesa and Anbaree were divorced within days of this assault. Privately Aneesa denies there was any 'affair'; she also claims that Anbaree enjoyed burning her with cigarette butts.

Aneesa Ahmed is the new Minister of Health in Maldives, after holding the Minister for Women portfolio for several years. Although paedophilia has been tackled by the Maldives government in recent years, domestic violence and the NSS's role in a culture of torture remain taboo subjects in the Maldive media.

Anbaree Abdul Sattar and Air Maldives
Despite a booming tourism industry where hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the country each year for luxury holidays, Air Maldives ended in bankruptcy in 2000 under the directorship of Anbaree Abdul Sattar. He was the most important Maldivian on the airlines' board.
'Air Maldives was created in 1994 as a joint venture between the government and Tajudin Ramli's holding company, Naluri, which paid $8 million for a 49% stake,' wrote Alkman Granitsas in the Far Eastern Economic Review (7 December 2000).

According to Granitsas, 40% of Maldives GDP and 70% of government revenues come from the tourism industry. Air Maldives had collapsed without Maldives media or government comment in April 2000.

'After just six years in the air and with only a handful of aircraft, the tiny carrier sank under estimated losses of between US$50 million and US$70 million,' Granitsas continued. 'Business confidence has plummeted and there has been a run on the Maldivian rufiyaa. Foreign currency has almost vanished from the islands and the Bank of Maldives could be facing a dollar shortage. Allegations of mismanagement and corruption at the airline have surfaced and at least one government official has resigned in protest. "The current economic crisis can be partly attributed to the collapse of Air Maldives," says Husnu Al Suood, a lawyer representing Airbus in the Maldives.'

Granitsas claimed the company's final mistake was a dubious leasing decision: 'Late in 1999, Air Maldives leased three Airbus A310 aircraft for long-haul routes, including one to London. But the route was never commercially viable, the leases cost over $1 million per month and the losses started to multiply. On March 1, Air Maldives ceased all international operations. A month-and-a-half later, the carrier closed down for good.'

There was no public inquiry into the causes of Air Maldives' demise. Anbaree quietly abandoned his Air Maldives responsibilities and concentrated on spying and other NSS duties. When Mohamed Nasheed, now a senior overseas member for the Maldivian Democratic Party, raised the scandal of the Air Maldives collapse in parliament, he found himself imprisoned on fake charges, exiled and stripped of his Majlis seat.