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Mass rally in Maldives over ex-president’s arrest

Friday, 27 February 2015 11:04 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 27 February 2015 11:04 AM ]

Maldivian riot policemen argue with a supporter of former president, Mohamed Nasheed, on a street in the capital, Malé, on February 23, 2015 (AFP photo).

Supporters of former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed have staged a massive protest in the island nation’s capital city against his detention on terror charges.

Hundreds of people arrived in Malé on Friday for an opposition rally in support of the former president, said Shauna Aminath, a spokesperson for Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party.

“The authorities have tried to scare away people, but we expect a very big crowd… The rally is to pressure the government to release [former] president Nasheed,” Aminath added.

The rally comes a day after a Maldives court gave Nasheed three days to form a defense team against charges of terrorism over the detention of Criminal Court Chief Judge Abdullah Mohamed in 2012, when he was still president.

Lawyers for the 47-year-old Nasheed, the Indian Ocean archipelago’s first democratically-elected president, say his charges are politically motivated.

Nasheed supporters also dismissed the charges, saying they were trumped up. They accused the court of denying him both legal access and medical treatment after his arrest on Sunday, when he was manhandled by police (picture below).

Government minister Mohamed Shareef said Nasheed was arrested because the court felt he may not honor a summons to stand trial.

The Friday protest marks the latest in a series of regular night-time rallies over the last year.

Nasheed, who had to resign amid an army mutiny and public protests over the judge's fate in 2012, lost the country's 2013 presidential election to the incumbent President Yameen Abdul Gayyoom.

The current political turmoil has damaged the atoll nation's image as a tourist paradise, with the luxury tourism industry constituting 30 percent of Maldives’ gross domestic product.

While Maldives’ population is nearly 400,000, over 750,000 tourists visit the mostly Muslim country every year.

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