Minister bans Cherie from the Foreign Office
NOT WELCOME... BUT LOOK WHO’S AT THE COMMONS!
CHERIE BLAIR was banned from the Foreign Office last week in a humiliating rebuff as her courtroom battle with George Clooney’s wife Amal gathered pace.
Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire refused to let Mrs Blair attend a Foreign Office meeting to discuss the fate of Mohamed Nasheed, the jailed former president of the Maldives.
Mrs Clooney is trying to free Nasheed – the first democratically elected president of the Indian Ocean island – backed by the British Government.
Meanwhile, the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair is being paid a lucrative fee to represent the autocratic Maldives government which imprisoned Nasheed on terrorism charges earlier this year.
Mr Swire was due to meet Maldivian foreign minister Dunya Maumoon last week as he planned a fresh bid to secure Nasheed’s release. But when Ms Maumoon insisted on being accompanied to the Foreign Office by Mrs Blair, Mr Swire refused – claiming there was no need for a fellow minister to have a private legal adviser present.
Instead of attending without Mrs Blair, Ms Maumoon cancelled the meeting.
It is not known whether this was on the advice of her lawyer.
The British Government’s snub to Mrs Blair is in stark contrast to the way it has treated Mrs Clooney.
The Hollywood actor’s wife held talks with Mr Swire at the Foreign Office in June and met Prime Minister David Cameron in his Commons study with Nasheed’s wife, Laila Ali.
A diplomatic source defended the Foreign Office’s treatment of Mrs Blair, saying: ‘The usual protocol is for ministers of different govern- ments to talk directly to each other. They do not need expensive lawyers to be present. Mrs Blair’s presence at such a meeting would have been totally inappropriate.
‘She – or anyone else – would just have got in the way. It suggests the Maldives government knows it is on very flaky ground legally. Why else would their foreign minister want a lawyer at her side?’
Mrs Blair’s London-based legal firm, Omnia Strategy, is reputedly being paid a significant sum to represent the Maldivian government.
Mrs Clooney is providing her services to Nasheed for free, after she described his jail sentence as ‘a mockery of justice’ intended ‘to punish him for criticising the government and remove him as a political threat’. Mrs Blair’s client Ms Maumoon is the daughter of former Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who was branded a dictator by critics.
He lost power to Nasheed in 2008 in the first democratic elections in the archipelago – although the new president was removed in 2012 when he was allegedly forced to resign at gunpoint.
At a hearing attended by Mrs Clooney in the Maldives earlier this month, one of Mrs Blair’s Omnia Strategy colleagues defended the state’s treatment of Nasheed. He told the court: ‘[Nasheed] was accused of a very serious criminal offence that undermines public confidence in the judiciary and the office he held.
‘Such an offence should be treated with the utmost seriousness.’ Nearby India, the European Union and the USA have all condemned the 13-year jail sentence handed to Nasheed in March, after a terrorism trial which was dismissed as ‘flawed’ by human rights groups.
Amnesty International called his imprisonment a ‘travesty of justice’, saying he was deprived of proper legal representation and any defence witnesses.
The charges against him surrounded the 2012 arrest of an allegedly corrupt Maldivian judge – which was described by prosecutors as a terrorist ‘abduction’.
Regarding the Foreign Office’s treatment of Mrs Blair, Omnia Strategy’s spokesman did not respond to The Mail on Sunday’s requests for comment last night.