Maldives court frees jailed ex-president Abdulla Yameen

Jailed former Maldives president Abdulla Yameen was freed on Thursday after the High Court overturned his conviction and 11-year prison sentence, days before keenly contested parliamentary elections.

A three-judge bench in the small but strategically located Indian Ocean archipelago nation held that Yameen’s 2022 trial on corruption and money-laundering charges during the tenure of a pro-Indian government was unfair and ordered a retrial.

“The lower court ruling was not fair,” judge Hassan Shafeeu said while reading out a lengthy decision that was broadcast live.

The decision came ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday, in which the pro-China Yameen is fielding candidates from a political party he formed while serving his sentence.

Yameen was convicted on two charges after a court found he accepted a bribe to grant a lease on a small islet for tourism development while he was in power between 2013 and 2018.

Thursday’s ruling set that verdict aside. Yameen’s co-accused Yusuf Naeem, a businessman who was said to have paid the alleged bribe of US$1 million, was also freed.

Yameen, 64, was held at the high-security Maafushi prison but was transferred to house arrest the day after his ally, Mohamed Muizzu, won presidential elections last September.

While in office Yameen had borrowed heavily and built thousands of flats and other infrastructure in the nation of 1,192 coral islands scattered some 800km (500 miles) across the equator.

Political observers believe that no party in the country can win an outright majority in Sunday’s elections and Muizzu may be forced to work with a coalition.

He awarded a string of infrastructure contracts to Chinese state-owned companies last Sunday.

That included a US$225 million deal for the