Clooney claims Maldives officials bugged meeting

Amal Clooney. Photo / AP

Amal Clooney and her fellow human rights lawyer Jared Genser have accused the Maldives Government of bugging them during a supposedly confidential jailhouse meeting with the country's deposed former President.

The lawyers had just left Mohamed Nasheed's prison yesterday when they received a phone call from his wife revealing that Maldivian officials were already fully aware of a highly sensitive secret discussion with her husband.

"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," Genser told the Daily Telegraph.

He said that there had been repeated incidents when private conversations between Nasheed and his Maldivian lawyers had clearly been relayed to prosecutors, so he said he was "utterly unsurprised but still outraged".

Clooney and Genser met the ousted President for two hours at the high-security jail to discuss their fight to obtain his release from prison.

The first democratically elected President in the history of the Indian Ocean island state was given a 13-year sentence this year for what they have called a "phoney" terrorism conviction at a "political show trial". Genser said that he had earlier contacted Toby Cadman, a British lawyer representing the Maldives on a contract for Cherie Blair's Omnia Strategy legal firm, to seek assurances that the meeting would be private.

The apparent bugging became clear just 20 minutes after the meeting ended when Laila Ali Abdulla, the former first lady, called the lawyers.

Nasheed had been contacted by a friend in the capital Male who in turn had been called by a senior government official saying he had been informed of a key piece of information from the meeting and wanted to know her views.