continued for “high treason”, the Head of State had voted in 2008 a law allowing to acquire nationality against a large sum of money.
MO12345LEMOND With AFP
Former Comorian President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, tried for “high treason” by the State Security Court, was sentenced to life imprisonment, she announced on Monday, November 28, during ‘A audience.
The decisions of this special jurisdiction cannot be the subject of appeal. Mr. Sambi, 64, briefly appeared on the first day of his trial last week, to denounce procedure in his eyes inequitable, before refusing to appear there during the rest of the debates. “He betrayed the mission entrusted to him by the Comorians,” said prosecutor Ali Mohamed Djounaid in a solemn tone on Thursday during the requisitions.
Principal opponent of the current president Azali Assoumani, Mr. Sambi, 64, is accused of being involved in the scandal of “economic citizenship”. The former president (2006-2011) had voted in 2008 a law allowing to sell at the high price of passports to those in search of a nationality.
A way to replenish the boxes of the State by offering an administrative reception land, in particular to the tens of thousands of “bidouns”, Bedouins of the Gulf countries considered as second -class citizens in their homeland and private Identity documents.
“like peanuts”
m. Sambi was accused of having diverted a fortune as part of this program. The prejudice for the government amounts to more than 1.8 billion euros, according to the prosecutor, is more than the GDP of the small poor archipelago of the Indian Ocean.
“They gave thugs the right to sell Comorian nationality as we would sell peanuts”, had castigated a lawyer for the civil party, M e Eric Emmanuel Sossa.
But according to the French defense lawyer at AFP, M e Jean-Gilles Halimi, “no trace of this money has been demonstrated, no discovered account”.
m. Sambi, in preventive detention for more than four years, much more than the legal duration set at eight months, was originally prosecuted for “corruption”. In September, the facts had been reclassified as “high betrayal”, crime which according to M e halimi “does not exist in Comorian law”.
The Court will have to “make a legal construction of this notion,” said the referral order. The defense denounced the illegality of this jurisdiction of which the president had already sat in the accusation chamber.