Former president Mohamed Nasheed’s lawyers have said that the government has obstructed the efforts to hand over the documents related to the appeal case to be filed to Supreme Court regarding his 13-year sentence prison sentence on terrorism charges.
Speaking at a press conference today, Nasheed’s lawyers said that efforts were made to hand over the documents to Nasheed on Thursday, which were blocked by Maldives Correctional Service officials who said that the documents cannot be presented directly to Nasheed, and requested to send them via Correctional Service Head Office.
They added that this was unacceptable, as secrecy cannot be guaranteed if the documents were to be submitted to a state institution. Correctional Service was not immediately available for a comment.
On 16 December 2015, Ministry of Home Affairs announced that Nasheed’s lawyers would be allowed to meet with him every day until the Supreme Court reached a verdict on the appeal case. This came hours after Nasheed’s lawyer Hassan Latheef requested for more face time with Nasheed to prepare the appeal case.