Amal Clooney meeting with ex-Maldives President ‘bugged’

Amal Clooney who arrived in Sri Lanka yesterday from the Maldives greeted by US Ambassador AtulKeshap in Colombo

BBC: International human rights lawyers defending the ousted Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed have accused the country’s Government of spying on them.

Amal Clooney and her US-based colleague Jared Genser visited Nasheed at the high-security Maafushi prison on Thursday.

Genser said he believed the meeting had “been bugged” after confidential details were leaked to the Government.

Nasheed was jailed for 13 years for ordering the arrest of a judge.

Nasheed’s wife received a phone call shortly after he met with his legal team on Thursday, from someone who had information about the discussion, his lawyer said.

“This was information she was very surprised to hear,” Genser told the Haveeru website.”It could have only come from the sensitive conversation we were having with Nasheed.”

A spokesman for the Maldives Correctional Service denied that the conversation had been recorded, according to the Maldives Independent.

Nasheed’s legal team claim the case against him is political and that any surveillance is a breach of domestic and international law.

The former human rights campaigner became the nation’s first democratically elected leader in 2008, ending three decades of rule by former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

In 2012, he was detained after being accused of ordering the arrest of a judge.

He resigned months later amid an army mutiny and public protests over the judge’s fate.

The UN said his rushed trial earlier this year was seriously flawed.

Clooney said on Thursday that she would push for sanctions against the Maldives unless it released her client.”It is disappointing that it has come to this,” she added.