Maldives judges summon ex-president after trial boycott

Judges in the Maldives on Tuesday issued a summons for the country's first elected president to appear in court next week after he boycotted the start of his criminal trial and violated a travel ban. Mohamed Nasheed had been due to go on trial on Monday on abuse of power charges in connection with the events that led to his toppling in February. But after he failed to show up in court and was then seen sailing out of the archipelago's main island, the judges turned to the police. "The Hulhumale Magistrate's Court has issued an order to police to produce ex-president Nasheed before the court on October 7," police spokesman Hassan Haneef told AFP. "The word 'arrest' is not used. It is only summoning him." The order looks set to trigger a new showdown between Nasheed and the country's new rulers after his Maldivian Democratic Party said he had no plans to return to Male until October 13 and would instead campaign in his southern stronghold.  "We do not accept these courts and president Nasheed will abide by the MDP decision not to accept any orders or decisions of these courts," party spokesman Hamid Abdul Ghafoor told AFP.Nasheed, who won the Maldives' first democratic elections in 2008, was seen leaving the capital island by boat on Monday to meet with his supporters in the nation of 1,192 tiny coral islets scattered across the equator. "I don't think the charges are correct," Nasheed told reporters at the jetty. The 45-year-old former leader told AFP at the weekend he did not expect a fair trial. The case, which could see him jailed or banished to a remote island, centres on Nasheed's decision to send the military to arrest a senior judge. That fuelled already simmering anti-government protests, culminating in a police mutiny in February and his ultimate downfall. Nasheed justified the arrest of the chief criminal court judge by saying the judicial service commission had failed to act on a string of allegations against him.  Nasheed, a climate change campaigner who was tortured in jail during Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's three-decade rule of the Maldives, insists he was threatened by armed rebel officers and forced to announce his resignation on television.But Mohamed Waheed, Nasheed's deputy who became president, has rejected claims his former boss was forced to resign and that he is the target of a vendetta. Apart from the criminal case, Nasheed also faces two defamation suits filed against him by Police Commissioner Abdulla Riyaz and by Defence Minister Mohamed Nazim. A judge indefinitely postponed the first case on Sunday at the request of Riyaz, while the second case was due to be called on Tuesday but officials said it was also put off. Political tensions have also been heightened by the murder early Tuesday of ruling party legislator Afrasheem Ali, who was stabbed on the steps of his apartment in Male. Police said the killing was the first assassination of a lawmaker in the country's history. Ali was seen as a moderate Islamic scholar in the nation of 330,000 Sunni Muslims who have traditionally led a liberal lifestyle. That reputation however has come under stress in recent years with the rise of religious extremism in a place best known as a honeymoon destination.