High-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney vows to secure former president Mohamed Nasheed’s release in Maldives

London-based human rights lawyer Amal Clooney will soon visit Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives whose incarceration has sparked widespread international condemnation, his office said on Thursday.

Clooney – who has notably defended Mohamed Fahmy, one of three Al-Jazeera journalists sentenced to jail in Egypt – will travel to the Indian Ocean archipelago with her Washington-based co-counsel Jared Genser next week to meet with Nasheed.

The former president was in March sentenced to 13 years in jail on terror charges.

Clooney and Genser will “visit president Nasheed in Maafushi jail where he is currently being held”, the statement said, without giving the pair’s exact travel plans.

It quoted Clooney as saying: “My co-counsel and I will continue to pursue all legal and diplomatic strategies to secure our client’s release, including through the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.”

Nasheed announced in April that Clooney would be part of his high-profile legal team, along with Genser – who has previously represented Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi – and Ben Emmerson, a judge on war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

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