Amal Clooney receiving death threats over work

George Clooney's wife Amal has been receiving death threats for representing a former president of the Maldives.

The international human rights lawyer is defending Mohamed Nasheed, who was the country's first democratically-elected president in 2008. He claims he was ousted from his regime at gunpoint in 2012, and was jailed for 13 years in 2015 under anti-terror laws.

In January (16), with the help of Amal and her colleagues, he was granted permission to travel to the U.K. to undergo spinal surgery. Amal subsequently met with British Prime Minister David Cameron to call for continued pressure against the Maldivian regime, as Nasheed has been left at risk of arrest if he returns to the country.

George's 38-year-old wife is now on the receiving end of worrying death threats due to her current line of work, and the movie star has sought to step up security to protect her.

South Oxfordshire district councillor Paul Harrison, who has been involved in George's plan to increase security around the couple's Berkshire, England home, reveals the danger Amal's work poses is "quite serious".

"Security isn't so much for him but for her," he told British newspaper the Metro. "From George's point of view, the high-level legal work she does and the death threats she gets, it's quite serious."

George's concerns are more than valid after Amal's co-counsel, Mahfooz Saeed, was stabbed in the head outside his hotel in the Maldives' capital of Male in September (15), just before they visited Nasheed in a Maafushi jail.

The Hollywood couple is currently in negotiations with neighbors over its security plans, as the Ocean's Eleven star wanted to mount security cameras on tall poles to monitor the area around their property.

Those plans were rejected due to a "potential infringement of the privacy of neighboring properties", but the coverage of the cameras has now been reduced from six meters (19.7 feet) to three meters (9.8 feet), which locals are reportedly happy with.

A representative for George and Amal has yet to comment.