Name: Ahmed Fairish
Name: Ahmed Fairish
Age: 22
Ahmed Fairish (22) was fifteen years old when the security forces arrested him while he was smoking a cigarette on a street in Male’. During the interrogation Corporal Haneefa asked him to sign a statement stating that he took drugs. When he refused to sign, male officers entered the interrogation room and beat him around the ears. He was taken out of the interrogation room when his crying got too loud and brought back in when the officers thought that he had calmed downed enough to continue. According to Ahmed Fairish this continued until he admitted to taking drugs and then the officers asked him to sign a statement stating that he sold drugs. At one stage of the interrogation one officer threatened to hit his face with a paperweight. Fairish said that after two days of such treatment, he admitted to everything the officers suggested because he could not bear the beatings anymore.
Soon after he signed the confession statement he was taken to the childrens’ unit in Maafushi prison. After a short while in Maafushi, he was transferred to house arrest awaiting his sentencing. Two years later, in 1999, when he turned seventeen according to the judge and the security officers, although Fairish himself denies that he was seventeen then, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and was taken to Maafushi prison on the same day.
In Maafushi he was soon put into a solitary confinement cell measuring eight feet by four feet for throwing away his food. Fairish stated that he threw the food away in anger of receiving such a sentence despite being completely innocent. Not long after he was put into the solitary confinement cell four officers, Seargent (Thimarafushi) Shahid, Ali Mohamed, Adnaan “Papa” and Bodu Hussain came into his cell and beat him. Fairish said that often the guards would come into his cell and strip him naked and beat him for no apparent reason and that the officers could come into his cell whenever they wanted to and nobody questioned them. In one incident three guards put a bucket on his head and kicked the bucket for a few minutes. According to Fairish he was often taken to the beach and beaten while handcuffed and when he fell to the ground he was dragged along sharp coral. He also stated that he lost consciousness many times on the beach and woke up in the cell. Fairish said that once the guards sprayed high pressure water at him while he was tied naked to a coconut palm, causing cuts on various parts of his body. When he managed to untie himself and run away another group of guards caught him and beat him. In another incident, security officers Ali Moosa and Shifag entered Fairish’s cell while he was reading the Quran. Fairish said that Shifag ripped the Quran from his hands, tore it and threw it away, before putting the bucket on his head and kicking it for a few minutes. Another time, Private “Fucking Mode” came into his cell and kicked him for a while and ordered Fairish to lick the dirt off his boots. According to Fairish, once the guards extinguished cigarettes on his genitals while he was handcuffed to bars of his cell.
Ahmed Fairish spent three months in solitary confinement and was tortured for twenty seven days without a break. Another inmate Mohamed Naseem said that he once saw Fairish being tortured for eighteen hours without a break. Fairish’s hands were cuffed for the entire three months that he spent in solitary confinement. He had to eat and wash himself with the cuffs on. Fairish stated during that time he was never taken to a doctor despite many requests but was treated by a medic through the bars of his cell. Many requests by his family to see him were turned down by the authorities while he was in solitary confinement. On one occasion when they were granted permission to see him, Fairish was told by the guards that the visit would be terminated immediately if he said anything about the abuse to any member of his family. He was also told to tell his family members that the cuts and bruises were injuries he sustained while playing in the sea with other inmates.
Ahmed Fairish was released in 2003 following a general amnesty that president Gayoom gave following the death in custody of Evan Naseem.