Police investigate ex-MNDF officer Zihan Hassan over call to set fire to state buildings

Police have launched an investigation into a Facebook post by Zihan Hassan, a former First Lieutenant of the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) and a former Deputy Minister in the current government, in which he called for setting fire to the buildings that house the three branches of the state. A police media official said that a Facebook status by a person named Hassan Zihan had come to the attention of the institution and that the matter was being looked into. In the post, Zihan questioned why the President’s Office, the Parliament building and the Supreme Court were not set on fire, and urged that they be burned, adding that "it would be fun." The post was deleted about an hour after it was published. Zihan, who studied at the United States Naval Academy and worked as a naval architect for the MNDF, was discharged from the military during the latter part of the previous government. He was later appointed Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Transport by the current administration, but was subsequently removed from that post. Since then, he has been critical of the government on social media.