Ex-Mongolian President Enkhbayar Nambar freed on bail

Former Mongolian President Enkhbayar Nambar has been released on bail, just over a month after he was jailed on accusations of corruption, his lawyer said Monday.

Nambar, who served as prime minister and then president for nearly a decade before leaving office in 2009, was detained on April 13 when police officers stormed his house.

State anti-corruption investigators accuse the 53-year-old, long-time rival of the country’s current president of misusing state assets whilst in power, and the authorities said he had failed to appear for questioning as demanded, the BBC reports.

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According to Bloomberg, Nambar had been on hunger strike for more than a week before his release to protest his innocence, and was taken to a hospital in the capital, Ulan Bator, last Wednesday after his organs began to fail.

Amnesty International told the BBC that he continues to be treated in hospital, despite being free on bail. Activists say Nambar’s detention was designed to keep him out of next month’s parliamentary elections, which he had intended to contest as leader of a new political party.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Nambar’s lawyer said that no formal charges have been filed against his client to date, and that Mongolia’s anti-graft agency – which had ordered Nambar’s initial detention – offered no details of its corruption allegations in court on Monday. 

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