Cherie's Pickings

A health tourist with a terrorist-type name is contemplating whether to return to the Maldives, where he is serving a thirteen-year prison sentence, or submit himself to the tender mercies of those compassionate G4S people and perhaps be put away in a house with a red door. A United Nations working group has ruled that Mohamed Nasheed, the democratically elected and thus former president of the Maldives, did not receive a fair trial; but since the charge was terrorism rather than tax-dodging, it is unlikely that Her Majesty's Government will be overly eager to take Nasheed's side, rather than "pushing for reform" as in Saudi Arabia and other fledgling democracies. Providing legal representation for the government of the Maldives is none other than the Reverend Blair's consort in avarice, Cherie Booth, whose law firm provides "strategic counsel to governments, corporates and private clients", with the neediest cases doubtless taking due priority.