(RSF/IFEX) – On 1 May 2005, Ismail Faiz, a systems engineer with the country’s sole Internet service provider, Dhiraagu, was arrested and detained. Although he was officially accused of “terrorism”, “incitement to violence” and “attempting to overthrow the government”, he is reportedly being held for working with the London-based opposition website Dhivehi Observer. RSF urged […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 1 May 2005, Ismail Faiz, a systems engineer with the country’s sole Internet service provider, Dhiraagu, was arrested and detained. Although he was officially accused of “terrorism”, “incitement to violence” and “attempting to overthrow the government”, he is reportedly being held for working with the London-based opposition website Dhivehi Observer.
RSF urged the British firm Cable & Wireless to contact the Maldives authorities and investigate the circumstances under which their employee was arrested. The telecom giant holds 45 percent of the capital in the ISP.
“Accusations of terrorism are often used in the Maldives to punish dissidents. This engineer is paying the price for President Gayoom’s paranoia in connection with the Internet, a media he cannot control and on which he is widely criticised. It seems to us that Cable & Wireless management should be concerned about the plight of its employee,” RSF said.
Local sources said Faiz was apparently accused of working with Dhivehi Observer (http://www.dhivehiobserver.com), a website that is banned in the Maldives. Its publisher, known under the pen name Sappe, denied having any contact with Faiz.
“The president is afraid of the Internet because now, whatever he does, we make him face up to his responsibilities,” Sappe said. “That is the reason he attacks a service provider. It has nothing to do with any struggle against terrorism.” Sappe said he believed the engineer probably angered the authorities by refusing to carry out certain technical tasks, such as filtering foreign-based websites.
Faiz, 29, is a systems engineer and administrator with Dhiraagu, whose two main shareholders are the Maldives government and the British telecom giant Cable & Wireless. RSF previously wrote to Cable & Wireless CEO Francesco Caio, questioning him about the ethical problems raised by his company’s investment in the Internet in the Maldives, a country that censors the web and has imprisoned several cyber-dissidents (see IFEX alert of 22 July 2004).
Faiz is being held in solitary confinement. His family was only allowed to visit him eight days after his arrest.
Local sources said another Dhiraagu employee, Mohamed Zahid, who works for a branch of the firm on Feydhoo Island, southern Maldives, was reportedly imprisoned on the same day as Faiz, perhaps for the same reasons. No additional information about his case has been forthcoming from the authorities.
