Cameroon ex-president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi was handed down a life sentence for high treason by a Comoros court on Monday, He was convicted of selling passports to stateless people living in the Gulf.
Sambi, 64, President Azali Assoumani’s archrival, was sentenced by the State Security Court, a special judicial body whose verdicts are not appealable.
“He betrayed the mission entrusted to him by the Comorians,” public prosecutor Ali Mohamed Djounaid told the court last week as he requested a life sentence.
Sambi, who ruled the small Indian Ocean archipelago from 2006 to 2011, enacted legislation in 2008 that allowed the sale of passports for hefty rates.
The initiative was geared at the bidoon, an Arab minority numbering in the tens of thousands who have been unable to obtain citizenship.
Under the scheme, the former president was accused of embezzling millions of dollars.
The prosecution said the cost was more than $1.8 billion — more than the impoverished nation’s GDP.
“They gave thugs the right to sell Comorian nationality as if they were selling peanuts,” said Eric Emmanuel Sossa, a lawyer for civilian plaintiffs.
But Sambi’s French lawyer Jean-Gilles Halimi said “no evidence” of missing money or bank accounts had been put forward to suggest a crime.
Sambi refused to attend the trial after a brief appearance at the first hearing, as his lawyers said there were no guarantees he would be judged fairly.
He was originally prosecuted for corruption, but the charges were reclassified as high treason, a crime that “does not exist in Comorian law,” Halimi said.
Sambi had already spent four years behind bars before he faced trial, far exceeding the maximum eight months. He was originally placed under house arrest for disturbing public order
AFP.
