If Mohamed Nasheed is not freed:

Amal Clooney threatens to press for sanctions

by Joanna Crawley

She's spent four days in the Maldives fighting her latest high profile legal battle.

Amal Clooney in Sri Lanka

And on Friday Amal Clooney took her case to the Sri Lanka capital of Colombo.

The international human rights lawyer held talks with journalists during a meeting with selected media organisations, in the latest step in her representation of deposed Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed.

Amal, wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney, has spent much of the last week at Maafushi Prison in the Maldives where 48-year-old Nasheed is serving a 13-year sentence for counts of terrorism.

On Friday(11), the London-based lawyer arrived at a Colombo hotel for meetings, seeming in good spirits despite the difficult and dangerous nature of her case.

Flashing a smile, Amal, dressed in a pink jacket and skirt, talked with members of the press in an effort to draw more attention to the case.

The British-Lebanese barrister joins the team on which defence lawyer Mahfooz Saeed was serving until he was stabbed in the head by an unknown attacker at the end of last week.

She has therefore put herself in a position of great danger to represent the former president and Attorney General Mohamed Anil has therefore insisted that there be a swift conclusion to the case.

State prosecutors have done a U-turn to appeal the conviction of former president Mohamed Nasheed.

Defending the case in as early as April this year, Amal - writing for The Guardian - accused the government of 'concocting a phony "terrorism" charge.'

The United States, the European Union and India have all expressed concern at the jailing of Nasheed for 13 years because he had ordered the detention of a judge in 2012 when he was still president.

Pix: Getty images

Last week, the United States called for the Maldives Government to release the former president after he was sent back to prison from house arrest.

Faced with mounting international pressure, Maldivian authorities have tried to distance themselves from the controversial judgement, saying that the state will take the unusual step of appealing his conviction.

Amal and her team's trip to Sri Lanka comes as she and a fellow lawyer accused the Maldives Government of secretly recording a confidential discussion between themselves and their client while inside a state jail.

Amal's fellow defence team member Jared Genser has accused the Maldives government of bugging a conversation his team had with Nasheed during a jailhouse visit.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Genser claimed he received a phone call from his wife that revealed government officials were already aware of sensitive details in the discussion, just moments after leaving the prison.

He said: "It is the most flagrant breach of the fundamental right of a defendant to be able to have confidential client-attorney discussions about sensitive information for his case."

He added he was 'utterly unsurprised but still outraged' by the clandestine bugging.

Meanwhile, Amal has warned she will press for sanctions against the Maldives unless it frees Nasheed.

"The next stage will be to pursue targeted sanctions, travel bans and any other action and recourse that we have against the government (of the Maldives) until this matter is resolved," she told reporters. It is disappointing that it has come to this."

- Floridanewstime