At least eight policemen have been on guard since 9pm Wednesday night, preventing public access to the residential building where Wahhabi prayer meetings take place.
The police say no arrests have been made, although a reporter at the scene claims two people have been taken away.
The search operation was launched only hours after police named five men they say are responsible for the explosion in the capital’s Sultan Park, which left twelve tourists injured.
Growing Crowd
The mosque is housed in a small room of the Zeeniya Manzil building off Malé’s main thoroughfare Majeedee Magu. A small congregation has met there daily for at least four years after several men refused to take part in government prayers in the nearby Zikura mosque.
Two police vans are parked outside the entrance, and a large crowd had gathered by 10pm.
A police officer standing guard outside Zeeniya Manzil told Minivan News, “we are just searching the premises. We are not arresting anyone.”
Links To Suspects
Police examined a motorcycle parked outside the Zikura mosque for fingerprints on Tuesday before impounding it. On Wednesday police revealed CCTV footage which they say shows one of their prime suspects in the explosion case, Moosa Inas using the cycle to speed away from Sultan Park as the bomb exploded.
Inas, who sports a long beard and headscarf in his police mugshot, has confessed to involvement in the bombing alongside two others, police said on Wednesday. They believe he is one of five men involved in the plot.
Malé’s reporting community are convinced some of the fourteen men in custody over the explosion are linked to the Zeeniya Manzil prayer group.
Worshippers refused to discuss the blast with Minivan News when we visited the mosque Tuesday night, saying only, “we are peaceful, but people are blaming us."
Leader Abroad
The room used for prayers is owned by Saeed Ahmed. Saeed, a religious dissident, was arrested during the Black Friday demonstrations of 2004, when religious radicals joined with pro-democracy activists to demonstrate against the rule of President Gayoom.
Relatives of Saeed, who live with their families in the other rooms of Zeeniya Manzil, say he has been out of the country for some months. People close to the congregation say Saeed has travelled to Pakistan for religious instruction, but family members say they do not know where he is.
The Zeeniya Manzil group is one of two illegal mosques known to be functioning in the capital. The other, the scene of a pitched battle between police and worshippers in June this year, has not been searched since the explosion.
On Monday Assistant Commissioner Abdullah Riyaz told journalists, "the reasons for the attack are now clear.” But on Wednesday he refused to say whether Islamic extremists are responsible, and would not speculate on links to foreign terror groups.
Courtesy: Minivan News
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