Amal Clooney made headlines again today - and it had nothing to do with her fashionable wardrobe or famous hubby George Clooney!
The high-powered human rights lawyer released a video message in defence of jailed former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed - the “first democratically elected president” of the island and is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence on terrorism charges - whom she has been defending in a high-profile case since September.
Clooney stepped up her game by working alongside Amnesty International to urge people worldwide to take action in a bid to free Nasheed.
"I read the judgment and all the paperwork and it became clear very quickly that we were dealing with a show trial, sham proceedings really," Clooney says in the video released this week by Amnesty International officials. "It was clearly a politicised way to get him out of the scene and not able to run in the presidential elections in 2018."
"He's also someone who became known as the Mandela of the Maldives because he's a human rights activist, and before he was president he was a journalist and an opposition figure and he paid a price for that. He was arrested more than 20 times in his country, he was tortured in prison and subjected to solitary confinement," Clooney adds in the video.
At the beginning of the trial, Clooney explained that the “charismatic leader” had “made a name for himself as a dissident journalist who challenged the repressive regime of Maumoon Gayoom, the Maldives’ long-serving dictator.”
Last month, George expressed his concern for Amal on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after one of her colleagues working on the same case was stabbed in the Maldives.
He told Colbert that "It's a tricky place to be right now. Her co-counsel was just stabbed in the head a few days ago... I'm very concerned with her being there, quite honestly."
You can watch the full video below.
