MALÉ - Jailed Maldives opposition leader Mohamed Nasheed has been given 30 days’ leave from prison to travel to Britain for urgent surgery and was expected to leave later Sunday, the prisons chief said. Prisons Commissioner Mohamed Husham said Nasheed, who in March last year began serving a 13-year jail term, would be allowed to undergo treatment for one month there and then return to prison. “We are making arrangements so that he can travel later today,” Husham told reporters. Nasheed’s lawyers met him Sunday, a day after the government made a U-turn and agreed to let him travel to Britain for spinal cord surgery. Lawyer Hassan Latheef said he and his colleagues met Nasheed at his high-security prison to discuss the latest development, but were awaiting a formal communication from the authorities.
The Maldives government, which had previously refused overseas medical treatment for Nasheed, announced Saturday that he had been given permission to travel to Britain.
“We met with president Nasheed. As usual, he was in good spirits,” Latheef told AFP by telephone. Local media reports speculated that he could leave the island as early as Sunday evening.
The 48-year-old former president was sentenced on terrorism charges relating to the arrest of an allegedly corrupt judge in 2012, when he was still in power. The UN has said his trial was seriously flawed and he should be released and compensated for wrongful detention.