The Supreme Court has heard concluding statements in the case filed by the Prosecutor General's (PG) office to declare new evidence can be admissible in the Vaavu Aarah corruption case against former President Abdulla Yameen.
Both the PG office and the defence presented concluding statements today.
Public Prosecutor Ahmed Shafeeu said the High Court's decision not to accept the evidence to prove that a defence witness had given false testimony obstructs the lower court from referring to the evidence.
"Since the High Court had ruled in a manner that does not allow the lower court judge to refer to the evidence, the judge cannot decide that a witness had lied despite knowing the witness lied," he said.
But the defence attorney Hamza Latheef said the Criminal Procedures divide the trials into different stages and the prosecution submitted new evidence after the stage for submission of evidence had ended.
Yameen was sentenced to 11 years in prison on December 25, 2022, after being convicted of taking USD 1.1 million in bribes for the sale of Vaavu Aarah island and laundering the money.
The Criminal Court found him guilty after accepting new evidence submitted by the prosecution to refute the defence testimony. However, the defence attorney appealed to the High Court, which ruled that the admission of new evidence was wrong and ordered a retrial.
The PG office then filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to quash the High Court's decision and to declare the new evidence submitted by the prosecution admissible.
According to the PG office, the High Court ruling contradicted some previous decisions of the Supreme Court.
The Criminal Court retrial hearings were adjourned on September 16, 2024, pending the Supreme Court's ruling on the admission of new evidence.
