A local extremist group linked to Al-Qaeda was responsible for the murder of three prominent Maldivians, including a journalist missing for more than five years, an independent commission in the Indian Ocean island republic has found. The Presidential Commission on Investigation of Murders and Enforced Disappearances said Ahmed Rilwan Abdulla, a reporter with the independent Minivan News website, was abducted on August 8, 2014 and murdered at sea.

Husnu Al-Suood, the president of the commission which was recently established by the Maldives government, told reporters in the capital Male late Sunday that the reporter popularly known as Rilwan received death threats from the group operating under the name Bilad-al-Sham on Facebook.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019