By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : Despite taking four people into custody, police in the Maldives are hunting for clues about the larger conspiracy behind the attempt on the life of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom three days ago.
“All we can say now is that we have arrested four people and investigations are on,” Maldivian police spokesperson Sgt Ahmed Shiyam told IANS over the phone from Male Friday.
However, presidential spokesperson Mohamad Hussein Shareef had told the BBC earlier that the attack, which took place at Hoarafushi Atoll Jan 8, might have been engineered by Gayoom’s political rivals rather than Islamic militants.
He also said that in all probability there was no connection with the bomb blast at Male in September last year, when several foreign tourists were injured.
The blast at a popular tourist site had raised the spectre of violent Islam in the tourism-dependent all-Muslim archipelago of more than 1,000 tiny islands in the Indian Ocean.
Gayoom, a long-time president, is being opposed by secular as well as Islamic parties, with the former complaining that he has been dragging his feet on democratic reforms and the latter saying that he is not being Islamic enough.
The man who tried to stab the president with a kitchen knife at the Hoarafushi Atoll was identified later as 20-year-old Mohamed Murshid, a native of Kinaaraa, Hoarafushi. He was caught red-handed by a 15-year-old boy scout, Mohamad Jaisham.
The president’s son Faris also grappled with him before the president’s Close Protection Group swiftly took charge.
Jaisham, the boy scout, was admitted to the Indian-built Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital at Male, where Gayoom visited him and praised him for his bravery.
Later, speaking at Thiladhunmathi Baarah, Gayoom referred to an attack on the member of the Majlis for Addu Atoll, Ibrahim Shareef, and said that cases of violence were on the increase in the Maldives.