victory in a party primary poll. After his childhood best friend, relative, and party's candidate Ibrahim Solih won the election, Nasheed returned to the Maldives, and won the seat for Machangolhi Medhu constituency in parliamentary elections the following year, subsequently taking office as Speaker of Parliament. On 6 May 2021, an assassination attempt was carried out against Nasheed near his home while he was getting into his car. He sustained serious injuries after an IED bomb that was stuffed with bearing balls as shrapnel was detonated near his home. He was treated in an intensive care unit in Germany, after undergoing multiple emergency surgeries. Maldivian authorities suspect it to be a terrorist attack by religious extremists. Three suspects were arrested. Early life Nasheed was born in Malé, Maldives, to a middle-class family. He attended Majeediyya School in Maldives from 1971 and 1981. He then studied at the Overseas School of Colombo in Sri Lanka from 1981 and 1982, and August 1982, he moved to England, where he completed his secondary education at Dauntsey's School in Wiltshire. Straight after his GCE A Levels, Nasheed moved north to Liverpool, where he spent the next three years reading maritime studies at Liverpool Polytechnic, before graduating in 1989. His aunt Lathee was the first Maldivian to pass University of Cambridge examinations in English; she later worked as an expatriate in New Zealand. Nasheed's first cousin is Lathee's daughter, current Minister for Science and COVID-19 Response Ayesha Verrall. Nasheed was held in prison for an article in the political magazine Sangu, published in 1991, alleging the government had rigged the 1989 general election. He was named an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in 1991. He has stated that he was tortured while in detention, including being chained to a chair outside for 12 days and forced to eat food containing crushed glass. He was later alleged by the government to have withheld information about a bombing plot. On 8 April 1992, he was sentenced to three years in prison on that charge. He was released in June 1993, then re-arrested in 1994 and 1995. In 1996 he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for an article he had written about the 1993 and 1994 Maldivian elections, and was again designated a prisoner of conscience. In all, he was arrested more than twenty times during Gayoom's rule, missing the births of both of his daughters. During