Comoros - Former President Ahmed Sambi sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court
On 17 January 2023, Alkarama addressed the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention regarding the life sentence of the former President of the Comoros, Mr Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed SAMBI, following his arrest in 2018.
An arbitrary arrest for "threat to public order".
On 18 May 2018 in Moroni, Mr. Sambi had publicly criticized the decision of his successor, President Azali Assoumani, to suspend the Constitutional Court and consider a referendum to revise the Constitution and thus allow the extension of his mandate.
The following day, he was arrested and placed under house arrest on the pretext that he constituted a "threat to public order". Following the political crisis following this arrest, the UN Secretariat General urged all stakeholders to "do their utmost to respect the rule of law, human rights and individual freedoms".
On 29 May 2018, Alkarama submitted, for the first time, Mr Sambi's situation to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which issued Opinion No. 65/2018 considering that his deprivation of liberty is "arbitrary in that it is contrary to Articles 9, 10, 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The Working Group therefore called on the Comorian government to "take the necessary measures to remedy the situation of Ahmed Abdellah Mohamed Sambi without delay, to make it compatible with applicable international standards ...".
The Comorian authorities, who refrained from releasing him, then imagined giving a legal character to his detention by referring him on 20 August 2018, before an investigating judge, the nephew of President Assoumani, who charged him with corruption and ordered his placement in provisional detention.
A "provisional detention" of four years followed by an unfair trial before an exceptional court.
Despite the Opinion of the Working Group, the Comorian authorities have failed to implement all the recommendations made by the UN experts.
After four years of imprisonment in difficult conditions, the accusation of corruption having never been established or supported by any material evidence, Mr. Sambi was nevertheless referred to the Court of State Security, an emergency court reinstated in violation of the Constitution by President Azali Assoumani to try his opponents.
From the "threat to public order" to justify his arrest to the accusation of corruption without evidence to allow his continued detention for 4 years, Mr. Sambi was finally sentenced to life imprisonment by the State Security Court under the pretext of "high treason". This unfounded accusation was obviously imagined by the Comorian authorities only to give a semblance of legality to his detention and thus exclude him permanently from the political life of the country.
Moreover, in their desire to damage his reputation, the Comorian authorities went so far as to try to bribe a French-Syrian businessman, Mr. Bachar Kiwan, to testify against the former president in exchange for financial benefits and the dropping of charges against him, which he refused by filing a criminal complaint in France against three Comorian ministers.
Concerned by the definitive life sentence of Mr Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi following a procedure that was clearly marred by numerous irregularities and in flagrant violation of international norms and domestic law, Alkarama has once again referred the current situation of the former president to the UN Working Group.