Male, Maldives – Police in the Maldives have raided the offices of a critical news outlet and barred its editors from leaving the country after it published a documentary alleging an affair between President Mohamed Muizzu and a former aide.The government on Tuesday defended the operation against Adhadhu Online as a lawful response to what Muizzu has described as “baseless lies”.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listPolice were “right to investigate and raid the news outlet over false [adultery] allegations against the President,” Minister of Homeland Security Ali Ihusaan said in a post on X.“Press freedom is guaranteed, but not a free pass to destroy reputations with lies,” he said.The raid took place late on Monday night, with police seizing laptops and storage devices, hours after Muizzu called on “relevant authorities to press charges against all parties who spread such false information”.The documentary, titled Aisha and posted on Adhadhu’s X and Facebook accounts on March 28, featured an anonymised interview with a woman who claimed she had had a sexual relationship with Muizzu.The woman, who said she was a 22-year-old single mother, said the affair took place last year, shortly after she joined the President’s Office as an administrator. Muizzu is 47, married, and a father of three.The documentary was released days before a constitutional referendum that delivered a stinging midterm rebuke to Muizzu, with 69 perce …
