Maldives: Nasheed risks arrest after boycott of trial

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Maldives: Nasheed risks arrest after boycott of trial

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Mohamed Nasheed had been due to go on trial on abuse of power charges.

02 October,2012 12:34 pm

The first elected president of the Maldives risks arrest after boycotting the scheduled start of his criminal trial and violating a travel ban, the government said Tuesday.Mohamed Nasheed had been due to go on trial on Monday on abuse of power charges in connection with the events that led to his toppling in February. But his case was adjourned, without a new date being set, after Nasheed failed to turn up at court. He was then seen sailing out of the archipelagos main island in defiance of an order to stay in the capital.The court will issue him another summons, presidential media secretary Masood Imad told AFP. After the second summons, if he does not comply, the standard procedure is they (the court) will instruct the police to bring him in.Nasheed, 45, had been ordered to appear before a three-judge bench in Male at an early evening sitting. But he was seen leaving the capital by boat to meet with supporters of his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in the south of the Maldives, an atoll nation of 1,192 tiny coral islets scattered across the equator. I dont think the charges are correct, Nasheed told reporters at the jetty.The former leader told AFP at the weekend he did not expect a fair trial that could see him jailed or banished to a remote island.The case centres on Nasheeds decision to send the military to arrest a senior judge, which fuelled already simmering anti-government protests and culminated in a police mutiny in February and his ultimate downfall.Nasheed justified the arrest of the chief criminal court judge, saying the judicial service commission had failed to act on a string of allegations against him.Nasheed, a climate change campaigner who was tortured during previous stints in jail for his political activism, insists he was threatened by armed rebel officers and forced to announce his resignation on television.But Mohamed Waheed, Nasheeds deputy who became president, has rejected claims his former boss was forced to resign and that the charges are politically motivated.Nasheed became leader after the Maldives held its first democratic elections in 2008 following three decades of autocratic rule by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.