A Comorian court on Monday sentenced to ex-president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi to life in prison for high treason, reported The Anadolu Agency.
The State Security Court sentenced the 64-year-old Sambi, 64, an arch rival of President Azali Assoumani, for selling passports to people from the Middle East. The rulings of the State Security Court cannot be appealed.
“Sambi is sentenced to life imprisonment,” court president Omar Ben Ali said.
The court’s verdict also stripped the former president of the right to vote and hold public office. The special judicial body has ordered his property and assets to be confiscated to the benefit of the public treasury.
Sambi was convicted in absentia after refusing to attend proceedings, claiming that he would not get a fair trial. He briefly appeared once with his defense asking the judge to recuse himself since he had previously sat on the panel that decided to indict him.
Sambi, who served as the president of the small Indian Ocean archipelago between 2006 and 2011, enacted a law in 2008 allowing the sale of passports for high fees. The scheme sold Comorian passports to people in Gulf countries numbering in the tens of thousands who cannot obtain citizenship.
The former president was accused of making millions of dollars under the scheme. He had already spent four years in prison before he faced trial.
A former French archipelago of three islands of some 900,000 people located northwest of Mozambique, the Comoros has faced years of political turmoil.
Since independence in 1975, the country has witnessed more than 20 attempted coups out of which four were successful. Comorian President Assoumani came to power in 1999 and was re-elected in 2016 in a vote marred by violence and allegations of irregularities. He was able to extend his term because of a controversial referendum in 2018 that changed the constitution.
