Nasheed, Amal Clooney call for sanctions against Maldives’ regime

Reuters: Former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, freed from jail last week to seek medical care in Britain, called on Monday (January 25) for sanctions against Maldivian government figures.

He was speaking in London alongside his lawyer, Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights attorney and wife of Hollywood star George Clooney.

Nasheed, the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, was jailed for 13 years on terrorism charges last March after a rapid trial that drew international condemnation. He was granted permission to leave the Indian Ocean Island for 30 days to travel to London for treatment for his back.

In his first comments since being released, he indicated he would not return before that deadline.

“But let me be clear I will go to the Maldives. I will definitely go to the Maldives, there is no doubt about that. But only the question is, how and when? For now I just want to spend some time with my wife and family,” he said.

Nasheed and his legal team called on the international community to impose sanctions against those responsible for human rights abuses in the Maldives.

“It’s easy to topple a dictator but not so easy to uproot a dictatorship,” he said.

“We must keep the hope alive, we can not give in, we must continue with the fight and with so many people having sacrificed so much, we can not give up and we will not give up,” he added.

Clooney and Nasheed’s other lawyers are now pressing the U.S., UK and Europe for targeted sanctions on the Maldives.

“The case for sanctions remains urgent. Even though President Nasheed is here today we can not forget that he has not been pardoned in the Maldives,” said Clooney.

“Let us not forget, if the government has its way he’ll be back in a prison cell in less than 30 days and that would be for the crime of simply being a moderate and a popular political leader,” Clooney added.

Nasheed was ousted in disputed circumstances in 2012 for ordering the arrest of a judge. The United Nations, the United States and human rights groups have said Yameen’s government failed to follow due process and that the case was politically motivated.

Clooney said only the threat of action led to the former president’s release.

Nasheed hit out at the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair.  Lawyer Cherie Booth, as she is known professionally, has been advising Yameen’s government.

“For me, for a former British prime minister’s wife to misread the story wrong, is very very wrong,” Nasheed said.

The Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon said Nasheed had exploited his release and had been “disingenuous at best, and misleading at worst,” about his medical condition.

“It is now clear his primary goal was to court publicity in the United Kingdom. This is not medical leave, but media leave,” he said in a statement.

Nasheed said his medical condition was serious and he had suffered from a chronic back problem since being tortured when in his 20s.

He said the date of his return was a “fluid situation” and suggested he might seek to exert influence from India or Sri Lanka or could return to jail.