Mohamed Nasheed sentenced to 13-year imprisonment

Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed was sentenced to 13-year imprisonment by a criminal court under the anti-terrorism laws. In a court hearing late Friday night in Male, Nasheed, the country’s first democratically elected leader who was arrested on February 22 over the detention of a judge in 2012, was charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1990.

47-year-old Nasheed resigned as the Maldives’ leader in February 2012 after a mutiny by police and troops that followed weeks of protests over the arrest of Judge Abdullah Mohamed on corruption allegations.

“The prosecution’s evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt that Nasheed ordered the chief judge’s arrest or forceful abduction and detention on Girifushi island,” Judge Abdulla Didi said in the court in the capital, Male.

The three-judge bench’s verdict was unanimous, and the office of President Abdulla Yameen, who had denied that the prosecution was political, confirmed the 13-year sentence.

Nasheed’s election in 2008 ended the autocratic 30-year rule of Yameen’s half-brother, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.