Moosa Ali Jaleel... dismissed

AFP
Colombo
Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen has sacked his defence minister after a security lapse led to an alleged attempt to assassinate the leader, his spokesman said yesterday.
Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Muaz Ali announced the sacking of Defence Minister Moosa Ali Jaleel in a tweet, but gave no further details. The government has not yet announced his replacement.
“The president has dismissed Defence Minister Moosa Ali Jaleel,” the spokesman tweeted in the Maldivian language Dhivehi.
It followed a reshuffle of key security officials in the wake of the September 28 explosion aboard Yameen’s boat, as he was about to disembark at the capital island Male.
The Maldivian president was unhurt in the blast but his wife and two others suffered minor injuries, in what a minister last week said was “likely to have been an attempt on the
president’s life”.
Maldivian authorities have arrested two security personnel who had access to Yameen’s boat but have yet to disclose what caused the explosion.
Jaleel was given the job in January soon after the sacking of his predecessor Mohamed Nazim, who has since been tried and convicted of smuggling arms and jailed for 11 years.
The incident has increased anxiety in a country mired by years of political instability. Things are a “little bit tense” in Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon acknowledged.
There are also concerns about the explosion’s impact on tourism, as the Maldives’ atolls are among the world’s premier resort destinations.
“We rely entirely on tourism really for our livelihood. It’s something that could potentially really put at risk our livelihoods and that’s something that every Maldivian finds very
worrying,” she said.
In July, President Yameen secured parliamentary backing to impeach another former ally, his vice president Mohamed Jameel.
Yameen, the half-brother of former Maldivian strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom who ruled for three decades until 2008, faces international criticism for jailing his opponents, including opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed.
Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected president, was jailed for 13 years on terrorism charges in March.
A UN Human Rights Council’s working group recently called for Nasheed’s immediate release, saying he has been arbitrarily detained.
“It is not an easy time given that there’s a lot of misinformation about president Nasheed’s trial and imprisonment,” said Maumoon, the eldest daughter of former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
Nasheed, a former journalist, was seen as pro-Western and at the forefront of the fight against extremism.