DDCOM to appear in parliament over Rilwan's report

The Presidential Commission on Disappearances and Deaths (DDCOM) has been scheduled to appear at the parliament's Committee on National Security Services (241 Committee) today.

The parliament stated that the Presidential Commission is scheduled to attend the Committee meeting at 2:00 today. Senior officials from the Maldives Police Service also met with the 241 Committee in a closed-door meeting last Thursday regarding the report formed the Presidential Commission that is under examination by the Committee. 

The Presidential Commission's report stated that police officers had been following and monitoring Rilwan, two months prior to his disappearance and even tapped the phone of Rilwan, citing a threat to national security. Two police officers had also allegedly tried to make a copy of a Rilwan's passport to show that he had died after fighting in a war abroad.

This had prompted the Attorney General to order the arrest of these two suspected officers but were countered by Police who stated that the two officers cannot be arrested because there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge them with a criminal case. 

A tweet by the Commissioner of Police Mohamed Hameed last night cited that since the Presidential Commissions law had transferred all the power of investigating the case of Rilwan to DDCOM, the commission was the only institution with the jurisdiction of investigating the crime. The Commissioner also stated that only the DDCOM can ask to have the two officers detained.

The DDCOM's report showed that Rilwan who had been missing since 2014 was abducted, forced into a car, put on board a dinghy boat, transferred to another vessel, and then murdered in the early hours of August 8, 2014, by a branch of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda in the Maldives.