Ex-President Nasheed asks government to review response to UN

Former President Mohamed Nasheed has requested the Maldives government to review its response to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Commission’s conclusion on his case.

He said this in response to the government's rejection of the UN human rights body’s demand to allow Nasheed to run in the 2018 presidential election.

In a tweet, Nasheed requested the government to “enter into sincere dialogue with the Opposition with the view to holding inclusive, free and fair Presidential elections.”

Former President Mohamed Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years in prison on 13 March 2015 after being convicted on terrorism charges for jailing a judge. He is now living abroad in self-exile after fleeing his sentence.

The UN’s Human Rights Committee on Monday called on the Maldives to restore his right to stand for office, after finding the judicial proceedings in former President Mohamed Nasheed’s conviction ‘contained serious flaws’.

The Human Rights Committee oversees implementation by state parties of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the Maldives is also party to, as well as its Optional Protocol.

In response, the government later that day stated in a press release that it “is committed to promoting and protecting the rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Maldives and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as per it’s international obligations, and it wholeheartedly refutes that any of these rights have been violated in the case of the former President Nasheed.”