Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed is conscious after life-saving surgery, his family said on Saturday, as police made two arrests in connection with a blast they said was being treated as a terror attack. The 53-year-old was critically injured after a bomb exploded as he left his family home in the capital Male on Thursday. Police and prosecutors on Saturday said they had arrested two men linked to Islamic extremism in connection with the blast. “From the people arrested so far and the information we have, there is a link to extremism,” Prosecutor General Hussain Shameem told reporters. A third man is wanted in connection with the attack, he said, adding police believe several others were involved in planning and carrying out the bombing. “I’m good,” Nasheed said after coming off life support, according to a tweet by his sister Nashida Sattar. His brother, Ibrahim Nashid, said doctors were happy with Nasheed’s recovery. “He is out of life support and breathing on his own,” he said in a tweet. “Managed to exchange a few words. Promised to come back stronger. I believe him.” President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih thanked Nasheed’s medical team and said he prayed for his “quick recovery and return – stronger and steadier than ever”. Nasheed is a democracy pioneer in the Maldives who ended decades of one-party rule in the archipelago and became its first democratically elected president in 2008. He is also known internationally as a champion for battling climate change and rising sea levels that he says threaten to submerge the nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands. Nasheed was barred from contesting a 2018 presidential election because of a terrorism conviction after he was toppled in a military-backed coup in February 2012. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has declared the conviction politically motivated. He returned from exile in Britain, however, and his party won legislative elections in 2019 and he is now parliament speaker, the country’s second most powerful post. Why has India still not condemned the Myanmar coup? On Thursday, Nasheed was walking to his car when the bomb rigged to a parked motorcycle went off, injuring him and two others. There has been no claim of responsibility, but his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) officials alleged political interests may have been involved. Nasheed had been vocal on the need to bring to justice some 72 suspects in a US$90 million theft case dating from the tenure of former strongman president Abdulla Yameen. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse