Groups advocating for press freedom have called for the release of two journalists who were jailed in the Maldives for violating a gag order banning public discussion of a documentary alleging an affair between President Mohamed Muizzu and a former aide.The International Federation of Journalists on Wednesday “strongly condemned” the jailing of Mohamed Shahzan and Leevan Ali Nasir while the Committee to Protect Journalists described their sentences as a “punitive attempt to criminalise investigative journalism”.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe journalists, who work for the news website Adhadhu, were sentenced by the criminal court in the Maldivian capital, Male, on Tuesday.Shahzan received 15 days in jail and Nasir 10 days.Muizzu’s spokesperson, Mohamed Hussain Shareef, rejected the criticism, saying any “attempts at portraying the criminal proceedings as an attack on free press are unwarranted and politically motivated.”The case centres on a documentary titled Aisha, which was released on Adhadhu’s social media accounts on March 28. It featured an anonymised interview with a woman who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Muizzu, 47, a married father of three.Muizzu has dismissed the allegations as “baseless lies”.Police raid on AdhadhuPolice raided Adhadhu’s offices in April over the documentary’s release, seizing the laptops of journalists, marketing staff and administrators along with hard drives and pen drives.According to Adhadhu, Shahzan was jailed after questioning Muizzu about late-night calls he had allegedly made to the former presidential aide. Nasir was jailed for reporting on the gag order itself …
