Thursday
25th Apr 2024
Dhivehi Edition
President Solih and Justice Ali Rasheed. Photo: President's Office
The government has awarded Hiyaa flats to the family of Judge Ali Rasheed.
The Hiyaa flats were constructed by the Yameen administration and had been allocated to its rightful owners by the time President Solih ascended to power. However, claiming that the flats allocations had involved “corruption”, President Solih established a Flat Committee to revise the allocations of the Hiyaa flats.
Many ruling party activists, and established news media, had criticized the 7,000 housing units, calling them “pigeon-coops”.
The Flat Committee recently releases their revisions to the Hiyaa flat assignments. Several poor people who had received flats under the previous administration had been disqualified by President Solih’s Flat Committee.
Among the people who had received flats were Fiyaz Hussain and Mariyam Rasheeda, family members of the former Criminal Court Chief Justice, Judge Ali Rasheed.
Judge Ali Rasheed had come to prominence after having sentenced the former President Yameen Abdul Gayyoom to five years in prison, with a fine of five million United States dollars.
Judge Ali Rasheed was soon appointed to the Supreme Court.
Judge Ali Rasheed had replaced Judge Ahmed Hailam as the presiding judge in the former President’s trial, and as Chief Justice of the Criminal Court, after the Judicial Service Commission suspended Judge Hailam over a political cartoon he had shared in a workplace Viber group.
Judge Ali Rasheed assembled the judge’s panel in the Yameen case and served as the leader of the panel.
After he had sentenced the former President to prison, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had recommended Judge Rasheed’s appointment to the Supreme Court through the Judicial Service Commission. The appointment had received unanimous approval from all MDP parliamentarians in the Majlis.