The Criminal Court has sentenced Ismail Haisham Rasheed and Zihan Ismail to life imprisonment and ordered to pay MVR 1.3 million to the Civil Court, in the murder of blogger/activist Yameen Rasheed.
During the trial today, Criminal Court stated that both Haisham and Zihan are eligible for the death penalty if found guilty, however, Yameen’s mother did not seek the death penalty/Qisas for the murderers of her son which made the court sentence them to life imprisonment and a fine of MVR 1.3 million instead.
Life imprisonment is defined as 25 years in jail in the Maldives. However, since they both have already served 4 years and 8 months in jail, they will now serve a further 20 years and 3 months in jail as part of the life imprisonment sentence.
The fine of MVR 1.3 million is based on the Supreme Court’s decision to assign MVR 1 million as financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder/Diya and an additional MVR 300,333.33 because the murder was committed in the holy month of Ramadan.
Yameen Rasheed was brutally stabbed to death in the stairwell of his house in Male’ City, M. Spatula, on April 23rd, 2017. In total, six men were charged but only Haisham and Zihan were found guilty of being actively involved in the murder of the blogger, meanwhile the rest of the suspects were acquitted.
