Former defence minister Mohamed Nazim, and religiously conservative Adhaalath Party’s leader Sheikh Imran Abdulla has been granted temporary house arrest for the month of Ramadan.
This is the second time the two are being transferred to house arrest. They were brought back to Male on Friday.
Maldives correctional service confirmed that the two are currently under house arrest till the end of Ramadan, and that they will be taken back to prison after the holy month is over.
Nazim was sentenced to 11 years in prison after he was convicted of weapons possession after police found a hand gun in his residence.
The religious conservative party’s leader was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment on terrorism charges for inciting violence during a major opposition protest held in May 2015.
Imran and Nazim had been under house arrest for best of the year in 2016, with the correctional service claiming that their prison cells in Aseyri Prison were being “repaired”.
Both political leaders have exhausted their appeal process and are currently serving their sentences.
Imran had appealed the Criminal Court’s decision to imprison him, however, his appeal trial was in hiatus since April 2016, until it was supposed to resume in February 2017. However, the court abruptly cancelled the hearing they scheduled in February, before resuming his trial again in late March.
In the last hearing of Imran’s case, the high court’s panel had heard closing arguments from both sides where the defence had reiterated how the prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove that the defendant had asked protesters to enter the restricted zone.
The prosecution, meanwhile, insisted that the defendant must bear responsibility for the violent clashes, which had left two police officers and several protesters injured.
However, neither his DNA nor fingerprints was found on the weapon.
In Nazim’s case, the Supreme Court had upheld the verdict of the High Court despite DNA recovered from the pistol that matched the DNA profile of former vice president Ahmed Adheeb Abdul Ghafoor, who is currently serving 33 years for multiple accounts of terrorism and graft.
The opposition heavily criticised the arrest of these two figures, claiming that they were trumped up charges for political gains.
