'Terror threat' behind cancellation of Saudi King's Maldives visit?

March 19, 2017

Dubai, Mar 19: The Maldives government announced that the official visit of Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to Male from March 18 had been postponed because of the spread of swine flu in the archipelago nation, however, highly placed sources say the reality is the Saudi King faced terror threats following which the visit was called off.

Separately, there were other media reports that speculated the visit was cancelled due to protests by the opposition parties in Maldives against alleged plans by Maldives' President Abdulla Yameen to sell off a chain of islands and lagoons to Mohammed bin Salman, son of King Salman and Saudi Arabia's defence minister and deputy Crown Prince.

As per the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party, the plans were to sell or lease Faafu atoll to the Saudi royal family, which would "effectively cede control of an entire atoll to a foreign government."

The MDP expressed serious concern that if this deal went through it would allow a foreign power to control one of the country's 26 atolls and amount to creeping colonialism by the Saudi government.

However, as per sources in the Maldives security establishment, the above two reasons are not why the visit was cancelled. Instead, serious concerns about a possible terrorist threat to the high-powered Saudi delegation during this visit to Maldives, was responsible for the visit being called off.

It is learnt that just weeks before the official visit, based on intelligence provided by Saudi agencies, a Yemeni national Yasir Yahya was arrested in the Maldives on charges of terrorism. The Yemini national, married to a Maldivian woman, had been residing in the Maldives for more than a year and was suspected of recruiting locals to an international terrorist group. He was later deported to Saudi Arabia.

Following this arrest, it was feared that Yahya could have set up terror cells in the country that could pose a threat to King Salman and his delegation.

Saudi Arabia has been lately dealing with threats from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and most of the terror attacks in the kingdom have had direct ties to Syria and Iraq. It is also well-documented that the Maldives is fast becoming a recruiting ground for the ISIS and more than 200 youth have left the country to Syria to join the ISIS over the last few years.

The advance security team comprising of Saudi military officers, who had arrived in Male weeks before the King's arrival in the country is said to have expressed serious doubts about the security arrangements and cover being provided by the host government, especially in the face of the imminent terror threat in the country.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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