Maldives vice president arrested over plot to assassinate president
October 24, 2015 01:43 pm
Maldivian authorities on Saturday arrested the nation’s vice president Ahmed Adeeb in connection with a plot to assassinate President Abdulla Yameen, who escaped death after his boat was hit by a bomb last month, the home minister said.
“VP Adeeb under arrest and held in Dhoonidhoo Detention (prison island),” Umar Naseer said on Twitter. “Charges: high treason.”
Adeeb was arrested Saturday at the international airport in Male while returning from an official visit to China, Police spokesman Ismail Ali told media.
The September 28 explosion took place aboard the boat when President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom and his wife were returning to the capital from the airport after a hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
President Abdulla Yameen was unhurt when the blast struck the boat he was using to return home from the airport last month.
However his wife, an aide and a bodyguard were injured.
The explosion on the Maldives’ presidential speedboat last month was caused by a device placed under the seat usually occupied by the president, according to details uncovered by an investigation conducted by Sri Lankan forensic experts.
President Yameen Abdul Gayoom had escaped unhurt because he wasn’t sitting there, the Maldivian government said on Tuesday.
The country’s Home Minister Umar Nazeer told reporters in the capital, Male, that a formal criminal investigation has been launched based on that finding.
Nazeer said President Gayoom’s usual seat was unoccupied at the time of the Sept. 28 explosion, which injured his wife, an aide and a bodyguard.
“Fortunately the president had shifted and was seated next to the first lady,” Nazeer said.
The explosive device “was small, designed not to kill everyone on board. (It was) targeted to kill or incapacitate him (the president),” Nazeer said. He declined to comment on the type of explosive device or how it was detonated.
Nazeer said the details emerged in an investigation conducted by Sri Lankan forensic experts. Investigators from the U.S. FBI, India, Australia and Saudi Arabia have not yet released the results of their probes, AP reported.
