The perpetrator of the knife attack that “slightly injured” Comoros President Azali Assoumani on Friday died in circumstances that are still unknown while he was in the hands of investigators, the Moroni public prosecutor announced on Saturday.
President Azali Assoumani, 65, “was slightly injured with a knife” on Friday evening, while attending the funeral of a religious dignitary in Salimani-Itsandra, a small town overlooking Moroni, the presidency announced on Friday, specifying that the assailant had been handed over to the “security services”.
The attacker “was isolated in a room to calm down yesterday (Friday) after his arrest”, and “when investigators arrived this (Saturday) morning to question him, they found him lying on the ground, unconscious”, declared the prosecutor, Ali Mohamed Djounaid, during a press conference at the courthouse in the capital of the archipelago.
“The doctor (…) after examining him, confirmed his death,” he added.
The magistrate specified that the attacker was a young 24-year-old soldier, named Ahmed Abdou and nicknamed “Fanon”, originally from Salimani-Itsandra. He “used a kitchen knife”, injuring two people, a relative of the deceased notable and President Azali.
“The president’s security agents immediately subdued the young man and handed him over to investigators,” he added, but they “did not have time to question him” between his arrest and his death.
– No autopsy –
“An investigation is underway to understand the circumstances or reasons that led the young (man) to want to attempt the life of the president. There will also be an investigation that will elucidate the circumstances of his death,” he continued, while specifying that the body had been handed over to his family, seeming to indicate that no autopsy has been requested by the prosecution.
A family member who requested anonymity told AFP, without giving further details, that “the burial took place” on Saturday afternoon in Salimani-Itsandra.
Funerals in the Comoros take place shortly after death in accordance with Muslim tradition, the religion followed by almost all of the approximately 870,000 inhabitants of the three islands of this small, poor archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
“The funeral took place in a heavy atmosphere” in the presence of a “large crowd, mostly very young. The family of the deceased, in shock, is walled in silence,” Daoudou Abdallah Mohamed, leader of the opposition Orange party, one of the few politicians to have attended the ceremony, told AFP.
“In the village, there is a sense of incomprehension. No one expected such a sudden death, but for the investigation to continue in order to explain the motivations of the young assailant,” he added, demanding that “light be shed on the circumstances and conditions” of his death.
During the funeral, a preacher, Said Harouna, “urged the old and young of Salimani to avoid unnecessary comments. The main priority of the young must be to pray for the deceased and to remember only his good deeds,” according to images published on social networks.
– “Like crazy” –
The authorities have not yet reacted to the death of the young soldier in detention. In the morning, they had reassured about the state of health of President Azali, who has not appeared in public and no image of whom has circulated since his attack.
Mr. Azali “is doing very well” and “ultimately it is more fear than harm,” government spokeswoman Fatima Ahamada assured the press on Saturday morning, in the presence of almost the entire government and the governors of two of the three islands.
The Comorian president “is in his residence, with his family,” said Energy Minister Aboubacar Said Anli.
The interveners refused, “in the name of medical confidentiality”, to reveal the nature of the head of state’s injuries, but Aboubacar Saïd Anli suggested that he had been hit in the “scalp, an area that bleeds a lot”, requiring “stitches”.
Ahmed Abdou, described by a source close to the presidency as a gendarme who had been enlisted for two years, had, according to the prosecutor, not returned to his unit after a “24-hour leave” on September 11.
According to a witness to the attack, who refused to give his identity, “the assailant was like a madman, he threw himself on the head of state”, who was on a terrace of the deceased notable’s house.
“He first attacked him with a knife before beating him up,” he told AFP on Saturday. “Without the person who intervened, I strongly believe that the head of state would not have survived.”
str-ayv/mba
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