Mohamed Nasheed

He is an ardent animal lover. Realizing the pain of detention, he set free all his pet birds post his release.

He is married to Laila Ali Abdulla and the couple has two daughters - Meera Laila Nasheed & Zaaya Laila Nasheed.

Mohamed Nasheed was born on 17 May 1967 in Male, Maldives.

He studied at the Majeediyya School from 1971 till 1981 and joined the Overseas School of Colombo, Sri Lanka (1981) and Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire, England (1982) for his secondary level education.

Having completed the GCE O Levels in Sri Lanka and GCE A Levels in England at the secondary level, he went to Liverpool Polytechnic to study maritime where he graduated in 1989.

Post education, Nasheed went back to Maldives in 1990 and started working as an assistant editor of the political magazine, Sangu.

Nasheed faced imprisonment in 1991 for an article published in Sangu that defamed the autocratic governance of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Sustaining all the physical and mental torture, he earned himself the title of Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

In 1992, the government charged him of hiding information about a bombing plot and he was sentenced to three years in prison on that charge. He was, however, released in 1993 but again arrested in 1994 and 1995.

In 1996 he was arrested and imprisoned again for his article that he had written about 1993 and 1994 Maldivian elections.

He utilized his imprisonment years in reading and writing, and produced a few books on Maldivian history.

Under Nasheed’s government, free healthcare services and a basic pension scheme for the elderly was introduced for the citizens of Maldives.

His emphasis on the freedom to express as well as promoting various other liberties in order to free people of the controlled authoritarian way of living won him the hearts of the common man in Maldives.

His biggest contribution came in the form of developing a transportation system that made commutation convenient amongst the islands spread across 90000 square km of the Indian Ocean.

He is credited with ending the autocracy of Maumoon Gayoom and to make way for a democratically elected government. Nasheed went on to become the first democratically elected President of Maldives.

Special attention to environment has won him lots of accolades. His concern towards the rising sea levels and its effects on the Maldive Islands was clearly evident by his declaration to become a carbon–neutral nation by 2020. He emphasized on the use of wind and solar forms of energy.