High Court Registrar Rejects Yameen’s Appeal Against Audio Evidence in Aarah Retrial

The High Court Registrar has declined to register an interlocutory appeal submitted by former President Abdulla Yameen challenging the Criminal Court’s admission of prosecution audio recordings in the Vaavu Aarah corruption retrial.

The disputed evidence consists of intercepted phone conversations from 2013, which prosecutors allege feature Yameen discussing illicit financial transactions. During pretrial proceedings, Yameen’s defense petitioned the lower court to throw out the recordings, arguing that the state failed to produce a forensic voice analysis report verifying the authenticity of the voice. 

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After the Criminal Court admitted the audio files into evidence, Yameen’s legal team filed an appeal before the High Court.

In a decision issued yesterday, the High Court Registrar dismissed the appeal on procedural grounds, citing established Supreme Court precedents on interlocutory challenges. 

The Registrar held that preliminary evidentiary rulings can be fully challenged and adjudicated by the trial judge during the substantive trial.

Under the Criminal Procedure Act, interlocutory appeals against pretrial decisions are strictly limited to matters that cannot be re-examined during the trial itself. The Registrar noted that entertaining routine evidentiary disputes via mid-trial appeals risks derailing lower court schedules and causing protracted delays in ongoing criminal proceedings.

The Aarah case, centered on allegations of bribery and money laundering linked to the lease of an uninhabited island through the Maldives Marketing and Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC) is currently undergoing a retrial. 

Yameen was originally convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2022, a ruling that disqualified him from the September 2023 presidential election.

However, the High Court overturned the conviction on April 18, 2024, citing the improper admission of late rebuttal evidence by the prosecution and ordering a fresh trial, a directive subsequently affirmed by the Supreme Court.

Separately, a parallel trial against Yameen regarding the lease of Raa Fuggiri has concluded and reached the verdict stage. A sentencing hearing initially scheduled for last Thursday was deferred by the Criminal Court.