Ex-president, environmental activist and prisoner of conscience is no stranger to jail and threats during an outspoken career
Mohamed Nasheed spent the day at Keneryge – his family home in the Maldives capital, Male. Outside around 200 supporters had gathered in the pouring rain after hearing that the former president might be arrested that afternoon.
Keneryge is a short walk from the presidential office. Just 48 hours earlier the 44-year-old politician had covered the distance, on foot, flanked by heavily armed soldiers who had just forced him "at gunpoint" to give up his office after three years and three months of his term. His wife has already left for the safety of Sri Lanka.
The support of his drenched followers can have been little comfort to Nasheed, a veteran democracy activist and environmental campaigner. He now says he has been threatened with life in jail by the newly appointed home minister.
The various accolades Nasheed has won in recent years – being made a UN champion of the Earth, named by the magazines Time and Foreign Policy as one of the world's top leaders and described in November 2011 by David Cameron as "my new best friend" – may now be of more use. International pressure may be the best protection "Anni", as he is popularly known, has against prolonged detention, say aides and close political allies.
The former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience – who became the leader of 330,000 people on the island archipelago in 2008 when he ended the three-decade rule of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom in the Maldives' first democratic election – is no stranger to the inside of his country's jails.
The son of a prosperous businessman, Nasheed was educated in his own country, as well as Sri Lanka and Britain where he completed a BA in maritime studies at Liverpool John Moores University. By his early 20s, however, he was known as an outspoken critic of Gayoom's regime.
First arrested in 1990 after writing a magazine article on government corruption, he spent long periods in jail, under house arrest, banished to a distant atoll and in exile, the victim of political persecution and the increasing focus for opposition at home and abroad. There were 18 months in solitary confinement, and incarceration meant he missed the births of his two daughters.
This, he later said, "was a tough reminder of a fundamental truth that the freedom of the individual should not be destroyed at the whim of an over-mighty state".
Former associates described Nasheed as focused, confident, committed and not without warmth. A trademark is his flawless delivery of speeches without notes – as demonstrated at the Conservative party conference in Manchester two years ago. He was elected to the Maldives parliament in 2000 and with others sought to establish the Maldivian Democratic party (MDP), before facing the following year what his supporters said was a trumped-up charge of theft of government property.
In November 2003, Nasheed left the Maldives and became a co-founder of MDP in exile. Being granted political asylum by the UK helped build pressure on Gayoom.
In April 2005, Nasheed returned to Male, two months before the MDP was officially recognised.
Within months he had been detained and charged with terrorism. But Gayoom's grip on the Maldives was weakening and in the same year the president agreed a roadmap to reform.
A few months after his 2008 victory with 54% of the vote, Nasheed announced his intention for the Maldives to become carbon-neutral within a decade. In October 2009, he presided over the world's first underwater cabinet meeting.
However, the resistance to his government from elements who had benefited under the autocratic rule of Gayoom remained strong. In 2010 his entire cabinet resigned to protest against what they said was graft and obstruction.
On Thursday Nasheed spoke to close aides from his home. "He was OK," said one. "He's been in tighter spots."