Five years after the Civil Court ordered Maldives Immigration to cancel former Special Envoy Ibrahim Hussain Zaki's passport, the High Court has now revoked the order.
The order to cancel Zaki's passport was issued by the Civil Court in 2020 in relation to a case on court order implementation.
Immigration, however, appealed the ruling at the High Court, stating that such an order cannot be issued. In 2022, the court ruled that the State does not have the legal standing to appeal the case.
The State then raised the case at the Supreme Court. In 2023, Supreme Court ruled that as the Civil Court order to cancel the passport is on Maldives Immigration, the State does, in fact, have the legal standing to appeal the case. Supreme Court hence ordered the High Court to accept the appeal case.
With this, the State once again submitted an appeal to the High Court. They stated that in cases of debt, the regulations allow courts to order seizure of passports where directors of a company or legal entity cannot leave the country when there is an outstanding debt. However, they said, the court does not have the authority to order cancellation of a passport.
The State's key argument is that there is a significant different between passports being seized, and passports being cancelled.
Last Tuesday, five years since the case was initially raised, the High Court ruled that the regulations allow seizure of passports and not cancellation of passports.
They said that interpreting this as cancellation of a passport is not legally acceptable, and encroaches beyond the allowances in the article. The court decided to revoke the order to cancel Zaki's passport.
The case was heard by Judge Mohamed Shaneez Abdulla, Judge Hassan Shafeeu and Judge Dheebanaaz Fahmy, with a unanimous rulling to revoke the order.