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Selasa, 09 Oktober 2007

Police Question Teen Over Religious Text Messages

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By Ajay Makan MNS
October 8, 2007

Police raided the house of a sixteen year old boy in the middle of Sunday night to grill him about text messages sent from his mobile phone quoting verses from the Koran.

In an apparent sign of government nervousness about radical religious activity in the aftermath of the Malé bomb blast, five policemen arrived at the Malé home at 4.15am and ordered the boy’s mother to wake her three sons.

The police asked all three boys to reveal their phone numbers, before taking the sixteen year old, who will not allow his name to be published, from his bedroom for questioning.

“They asked me if I had used my phone to send messages quoting the Koran,” the boy told Minivan News. “They told me they had copies of my text messages if I didn’t tell them anyway.”

The boy admitted to sending several verses of the Koran and short prayers, duas, to friends and relatives on other islands.

One particular verse, which appears to have triggered police interest, calls on Muslims to, “fight the leaders of unbelief… if they have attacked you first.”

The boy was not arrested, but the policemen searched the room he shares with his two elder brothers. At one point police uncovered an extractor fan capacitor and battery and had to be reassured about their use.

“They searched the room for almost half an hour. They kept looking at the fan and charger as if they could be used to make bombs,” one of the boy’s elder brothers said.

The police confiscated the mobile phones of all three brothers, promising they could be picked up at 9am on Monday.

Three plain clothes officers arrived at the house just after midnight on Tuesday to return two of the three phones. Police have kept the mobile of the sixteen year old.

The boy’s parents, who also asked not to be named, were taken outside by police at 5am.

“They told us we were not looking after our children and if we don’t control them they will become extremists,” his mother told Minivan News.

The boy’s father says the police openly admitted to reading his son’s text messages as part of the investigation into the Malé bomb blast on 29 September which injured twelve tourists.

“They told us a message had been sent from his phone saying Sheikh Fareed [a radical preacher] is calling for jihad, during the investigation. He says he hasn’t sent messages from Fareed.”

“It’s unlawful for them to read messages, but they told us they were allowed to in these extreme circumstances,” his father added.

Clause 20 of the Maldives constitution states, “letters, messages, telephonic conversations and other means of communication shall not be intercepted, read, listened to or divulged except as expressly provided by law.”

The People’s Majlis has not passed any law permitting the interception of private communications.

The police have declined to comment on the search or say whether they are intercepting text messages as part of the explosion investigation.