MORONI: A man who attacked Comoros President Azali Assoumani with a knife, wounding him slightly, has been found dead in prison in unclear circumstances, the public prosecutor said on Saturday.

The attack on the president took place on Friday afternoon during a funeral for a well-known religious leader in a village near Moroni. Prosecutor Ali Mohamed Djounaid said the dead man was a 24-year-old soldier called Ahmed Abdou from the village of Salimani-Itsandra, where the funeral took place. He had attacked the president and a relative of the late religious leader with a “kitchen knife”, the prosecutor said, before being restrained and handed over to investigators.

“He (Abdou) was isolated in a cell so that he could calm down yesterday after his arrest. Investigators found his lifeless body lying on the floor this morning,” Djounaid told a press conference. “A doctor declared him dead.” “An investigation has been launched to determine the cause of his death,” he added.

The government declined to detail the president’s injuries, saying only that he had needed “stitches to his scalp”. Government spokeswoman Fatima Ahamada said that 65-year-old Assoumani was at home with his family and “doing very well”. She was speaking at a press conference in the presence of nearly the entire government and the governors of two of the Comoros archipelago’s three islands.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2024