Maldives lets jailed ex-President travel to UK for surgery

Former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, who was jailed for 13 years following a controversial trial in 2015, has been granted permission to travel to Britain for surgery, the Maldives government said on Saturday.

“The government of Maldives has granted permission to former President Nasheed to travel to the United Kingdom to undergo surgery, at his request,” the foreign ministry said on its official Twitter account.

Mr Nasheed, who became the country’s first democratically elected leader in 2008, has previously complained of a spinal cord injury and his lawyers have demanded for months that he be allowed specialist treatment abroad.

The 48-year-old Opposition leader was confined to jail on a small prison island near the capital Male in March 2015 on terror 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 that he should be released and provided compensation for wrongful detention.

His 13-year jail sentence was commuted to house arrest in July, but two months later the police took him back to prison.