Police in the Maldives on Friday raided a private television station in connection with a YouTube video that allegedly threatened President Abdulla Yameen, the network’s managing director said.
The move came days after President Yameen imposed a state of emergency, giving wider powers to police and armed forces to arrest and suspending freedom of assembly and freedom of movement.
Ibrahim Waheed said police had stopped Sangu TV from broadcasting and searched its studios in the capital island Male in a pre-dawn raid, removing computer hard disks.
“They have taken all the hard drives of all our computer systems,” Waheed told reporters. “The station has come to a complete standstill.”
Police had accused the station of uploading a YouTube video which reportedly showed three masked men issuing a death threat to the president with the flag of the Islamic State group in the background.
The Maldivian authorities had previously dismissed the video as a fake.
The motive for the raid was not immediately clear but there are growing concerns about radicalisation in the Maldives, with local media saying dozens of the country’s citizens have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State group. At least five are known to have died.
