Name:
Naushad Waheed
Name:
Naushad Waheed
Age: 43
On the 29th of June 1990 the police arrested Naushad Waheed (43) for drawing an anti-government cartoon in the weekly magazine “Hukuru”. He was kept in a solitary confinement cell at the police station in Male’ for 19 days for questioning. When he refused to sign a statement that had been written by the investigating officers he was transferred to Dhoonidhoo Detention Centre. There he was kept in solitary confinement for another 29 days. After dragging the case through the courts for three years the police informed him by telephone that they had withdrawn the charges.
Almost six months after his first arrest, on the 19th of December 1990 Naushad Waheed was put into a solitary confinement cell in Dhoonidhoo Detention Centre, because according to Naushad the police assumed that he might talk to the foreign delegates attending the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in the Maldives that month.
A year later, in December 1991 he was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night and put into a solitary confinement cell made out of corrugated metal sheets. On the second night he was handcuffed with a single-lock handcuff and the cuffs were kept on for 20 days. When cuffed in this manner both arms from the elbow down would always be touching each other. The prison guard who cuffed him, Abdul Shakoor Abdulla, told Naushad that he was simply obeying orders and that there was nothing he could do about it. This time he was allowed showers only on Fridays and large granules of salt and sand were put into his food. According to Naushad he was interrogated by Thoha Waheed, Mora Thoufeeg, Ibrahim Manik and Vaavu Lahuthu. Naushad also said a number of other detainees were ill-treated too during that time among them Shareef and Ahmed Rasheed, who were kept in stocks and with their hands cuffed with a single lock handcuff for months. This time Naushad spent four and half months in a six feet by six feet concrete cell. He spent another eight months under house arrest before he was sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment for terrorism. After two months in Gamaadhoo prison, he was transferred to house arrest for a year and was granted a pardon by the president.
Ten years later, on the 9th of December 2001 the police detained Naushad again. The police this time questioned him about an email correspondence that took place between him and Amnesty International. He was kept in a police detention cell for five days and when he admitted to sending emails to Amnesty International he was taken to Dhoonidhoo Detention Centre. In Dhoonidhoo the investigation officers wanted Naushad to sign a confession statement admitting to the distribution and involvement in the publication of “Sandhaanu” magazine (an anti-government news magazine distributed via email). During the investigation, he was taken out of his cell every night around 10:30 to the beach and had to sit on a chair for hours. When he refused for five months to sign the confession statement he was transferred to house arrest. After six months of house arrest he was taken to court and found guilty of acts against the state under article 29 of the Maldivian Penal Code. Naushad received the maximum sentence of fifteen years in prison specified under this article. During the trial Naushad Waheed had to defend himself as he was not allowed to have a lawyer represent him.
After a few days in a holding cell in Male’ he was taken to Maafushi Prison. On arrival in Maafushi he was thoroughly searched. Naushad stated that “as I walked in [I saw that], there were three long benches inside. There was a National Secrutiy Service Private with a nickname “Maakanaa Mode” sitting on one of these benches. He signalled to me with his finger to come to him. He took away the bag of clothes and toiletries I was carrying, and proceeded to conduct a thorough check of the contents. During this examination, he inserted a piece of stick into the bottle of body lotion and emptied the contents of my bag on the floor. Then he asked me to take my shirt off, which he examined carefully and dropped on the floor as well. Then he asked me to give him my pants. I hesitated as I was a bit afraid. I looked around and when I saw a lot of people without any clothes on, I also took my pants off and handed them over to him. After examining it carefully he dropped the pants also on to the floor. Then I was asked to remove and hand over my underwear, I did that as well. He examined the underwear too and dropped it on the pile on the floor. Then he asked me to lift my penis. When I obliged, I was asked to lift it more and spread my legs. While we were kept naked, the prison guards would make gestures to each other and mock and humiliate us.” At the end of the search Naushad was assigned to a cell made for 104 prisoners. According to Naushad it was common for the cell to have 130 inmates.
One night Naushad said, around ten o’clock seventy or eighty officers in riot gear entered the compound carrying batons, buckets and gunny bags. They then handcuffed all the prisoners who were standing, Naushad amongst them, into lines of thirty and marched them towards the beach and threw them into the lagoon. Once drenched, the prisoners were taken out of the sea and beaten. The prisoners were then asked to run. After a while when the weaker prisoners fell to the ground, everybody in that line was kicked and forced to continue further. Having done this for a while the guards tied the prisoners to coconut palm trunks and poured urine and coffee over the prisoners’ heads. The prisoners were kept tied to the coconut trees for three days and three nights.
According to Naushad prisoners were often taken out of the cell and handcuffed to coconut palms behind their backs for disobedience. Sergeant Shahid Ali Manik (nicknamed “Papa”) is foremost in taking prisoners out of the cell. One incident Naushad remembers is how they dragged out a female prisoner from her cell, handcuffed her to a coconut palm and shaved her hair off for calling a prison guard “baldy”. Naushad also stated that a seventeen year old boy named Ahmed Fairish was severely tortured. Fairish was once taken out of his cell, stripped naked and put into a plastic water container before the drum was rolled around the prison compound. Naushad also witnessed Fairish being made to run naked in front of the cells while the guards whipped him with a rubber whip.