President Mohamed Nasheed welcomes Ms. Kirsty Brimelow QC who has offered her services to the legal team. Prominent members of the English bar, Sir Ivan Lawrence QC and Mr. Ali Mohamed Azhar have also been working with Mr. Hassan Latheef (Uz) and Ms. Hisaan Hussein (Uza), Mr. Ahmed Abdullah Afeef (Uz) and Mr. Abdullah Shaair (Uz) for President Nasheed’s legal team.

Although, Sir Ivan Lawrence QC, Mr. Ali Mohamed Azhar and Ms. Kirsty Brimelow QC are part of President Nasheed’s legal team, the Attorney General’s regulations relating to private practice prevents them from being President Nasheed’s advocates in court. Article 2 (a) of the regulation states “a person has to either be a Maldivian citizen or be married to a Maldivian citizen and reside for most part in the Maldives” in order to practice law in the Maldives. This restriction is a hindrance to clients who wish to have foreign legal professionals represent them in courts of the Maldives.

Ms. Brimelow QC is a criminal law specialist who has engaged in cases both nationally and internationally. In particular, she is sought after to act in cases with a human rights law element. She first led other counsel in 1999 and maintained this level of practice so as to be appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2011. As vice-chairwoman of the Bar Human Rights Committee, Ms. Brimelow QC is legal adviser to the Constitution Committee of Fiji, has carried out international trial observations, worked on death penalty cases from within Jamaica and carried out training on human rights, international and criminal law in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

In the previous three years, Ms. Brimelow QC has acted for two Chief Justices (the Chief Justice of Trinidad and Tobago and the Chief Justice of Gibraltar). The Government of Antigua and Barbuda appointed her as Counsel to a Commission of Inquiry into international fraud.In 2009, she led a delegation of UK barristers in providing human rights law training in Colombia. Ms. Brimelow QC was twice listed in Management Today’s most influential 35 women under 35 (2003 and 2005). She was appointed as the spokesperson for the Bar Council from 1998 to 2008 and remains a regular legal commentator in the media.

Ms. Brimelow QC was a member of the inaugural Times Law Panel from 2007 to 2009 (classified as being one of the “Top 100 Lawyers”) and nominated as The Times “Lawyer of the Week”. She was elected and co-opted to the Criminal Bar Executive for 7 years.