COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s former president Ranil Wickremesinghe was granted bail on Tuesday, four days after his arrest on the charge of misusing state funds for an overseas visit.

Sri Lanka's jailed ex-president Wickremesinghe granted bail

The ex-leader, 76, was arrested last Friday for allegedly spending ,000 in government funds on a 2023 stopover in the United Kingdom while returning from attending the Group of 77 summit in Havana and the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Colombo Fort Magistrate Nilupuli Lankapura ordered Wickremesinghe’s release on a 5-million-rupee (,600) bond after a lengthy hearing held under tight security, which included elite troops.

A few hundred protesters had gathered outside the court earlier in the day in support of Wickremesinghe and were met by riot police, who held back the crowd.

After being remanded in custody last Friday, the former leader was rushed to a prison hospital and then the South Asian country’s main state-run hospital suffering from dehydration, but hospital officials said his condition was stable.

Wickremesinghe joined Tuesday’s bail hearing via video link from his bed at the National Hospital of Colombo, where he is being treated under armed guard.

The judge ordered his next hearing for Oct. 29.

His arrest came as part of his successor Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s campaign against endemic corruption on the island nation, which is still emerging from its worst economic crisis in 2022.

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Three former Sri Lankan presidents expressed solidarity with Wickremesinghe on Sunday and condemned his incarceration as a “calculated assault” on democracy.

Wickremesinghe’s United National Party said it believed he was being prosecuted out of fear that he could mount a political comeback.

He lost the presidential election in September to Dissanayake, but has remained politically active despite holding no elected office.

He has maintained that his wife’s travel expenses in the UK were met by her personally and that no state funds were used for the visit.

Wickremesinghe became president in July 2022 after then-leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa stepped down following months of street protests fueled by the economic crisis.