Male, Maldives – Police in the Maldives have raided the offices of a critical news outlet and barred its editors from leaving the country after it published a documentary alleging an affair between President Mohamed Muizzu and a former aide.

The government on Tuesday defended the operation against Adhadhu Online as a lawful response to what Muizzu has described as “baseless lies”.

Police were “right to investigate and raid the news outlet over false [adultery] allegations against the President,” Minister of Homeland Security Ali Ihusaan said in a post on X.

“Press freedom is guaranteed, but not a free pass to destroy reputations with lies,” he said.

The raid took place late on Monday night, with police seizing laptops and storage devices, hours after Muizzu called on “relevant authorities to press charges against all parties who spread such false information”.

The documentary, titled Aisha and posted on Adhadhu’s X and Facebook accounts on March 28, featured an anonymised interview with a woman who claimed she had had a sexual relationship with Muizzu.

The woman, who said she was a 22-year-old single mother, said the affair took place last year, shortly after she joined the President’s Office as an administrator. Muizzu is 47, married, and a father of three.

The documentary was released days before a constitutional referendum that delivered a stinging midterm rebuke to Muizzu, with 69 percent of voters rejecting a government proposal on April 4 to align presidential and parliamentary election cycles. Critics had said the plan would undermine checks and balances in the country.

‘On the government’s order’

The raid on Adhadhu – aligned with the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party – comes amid mounting concerns over press freedom in the Maldives, a Sunni Muslim island nation whose luxury resorts draw tourists from around the world. Those fears were stoked by a widely criticised media law passed in September of last year that established a commission, stacked with government loyalists, with the power to fine, suspend and shut down outlets.

A letter from the new regulator, along with a police intelligence report, formed part of the evidence for the search warrant against Adhadhu on Monday.

The warrant accused the outlet and its staff of “qazf” or the false accusation of adultery or unlawful sexual intercourse. The offence carries a prison term of one year and seven months, and can also include 80 lashes.

Adhadhu CEO Hussain Fiyaz Moosa, who was slapped with a travel ban over the documentary, condemned the police’s actions as an attack on press freedom.

“This is being done by the police, with the influence of the government, on the government’s order, to directly stop our work,” he told Al Jazeera.

During the four-hour search, Fiyaz said police seized the laptops of journalists, marketing staff and administrators, along with hard drives and pen drives, despite a court warrant that authorised only search and inspection of the premises.

He said a separate criminal court warrant issued later imposed a travel ban on him and Editor Hassan Mohamed, freezing their passports until July 26. The order cited a police intelligence report alleging that the two were planning to flee the country.

Fiyaz, who had returned to the Maldivian capital, Male, from an overseas trip shortly before the raid, said the basis for the order made no sense. He stressed that police had not approached the newsroom with any questions in the four weeks between the documentary’s publication and the raid.

The two editors have now been summoned to appear before police on Wednesday.

Fiyaz said the police investigation would not stop Adhadhu’s work.

“No matter how much the government wants to stop Adhadhu news, our voice and our pens cannot be silenced,” he said.

Al Jazeera is awaiting comment from the Maldivian government on Fiyaz’s claims.

Chief spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef told Al Jazeera he would respond later on Tuesday, as he was boarding a plane.

‘A clear red line’

The raid on Adhadhu was not the first on Maldivian newsrooms.

The offices of Maldives Independent, a news website, was searched in 2016, while the broadcasting regulator also pulled two television stations off air during the same period. But the criminal use of “qazf” against a news outlet and the wholesale seizure of journalists’ computers and storage devices are both unprecedented.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Tuesday called on the government to return the seized equipment and lift the travel bans.

“The raid on Adhadhu and subsequent travel bans are an attempt to criminalise investigative journalism under the guise of religious and national interests,” said CPJ’s Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator Kunal Majumder. “Using religious laws to bypass civil media regulations sets a chilling precedent. Authorities must allow the press to hold government offices accountable.”

The Maldives Journalists Association also expressed alarm.

“The government is crossing a clear red line,” it said in a statement.

“We demand an immediate end to the intimidation of journalists and the suppression of press freedom.”