Foreign Nationals
Case Study 2022 - Shah Alom Mia
An estimated 230,000 Bangladeshis work
across the Maldives archipelago, including
tens of thousands who are undocumented, a
remarkable number for a country with a
population of around 520,000 (World Bank
2021).
However, until 2022 there had been no
documented cases of foreign nationals being
sentenced to death in the Maldives.
In February
2022,
Bangladeshi
national Shah
Alom Mia
(Salim) was
sentenced to
death for the
murder of
Mahmood
Abubakar, a
Maldivian businessman. Salim was sentenced
to death in compliance with Islamic Shariah,
and under the Act on Prohibiting Threatening
and Possession of Dangerous Weapons and
Sharp Objects (Abdulla 2022).
It is thought that the murder was related to a
robbery. The victim’s heirs requested the
death penalty under the Shariah principle of
retributive qisas.
This was the rst time that a foreign national
had been sentenced to death in Maldives,
with all previous sentences being imposed
on Maldivians.
Acknowledgements
With special thanks to Francesca Rigg for her assistance with this research in the Maldives.
Death Penalty Research Unit, University of Oxford
For more research see:
fi
foreign-nationals.uwazi.io or tinyurl.com/mappingdeathrow