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Comoros: tensions after the murder of army leader

By on June 16, 2010
Security forces have been deployed on Monday, June 14th, in front of ministries and main administration buildings of the Comoran capital, Moroni, after the murder of a high-ranking officer of the army, colonel Combo Ayouba, on Sunday evening in at his residence. Certain native demonstrators of the Anjouan island, as the murdered officer, chanted slogans hostile to the president Ahmed Abdallah Sambi; while others threw stones on the Ministry of Finance and Education, causing some wounded persons.

According to a source close to the investigation, “No serious conclusion can be advanced for the moment, neither on the author of the murder, nor on the motivations”.
But this murder intervenes in a context of deep political tension in the Comoros. Considered within the staff as a believer of president Sambi, the victim was one of the former rare members still in service of the presidential guards formed in the 1980s by the French mercenary Bob Denard.
In March, Mr. Sambi had prolonged his mandate till the end of 2011, to harmonise the election of the president of the Union with that of the governors. A preservation in the power which arouses a very deep dissatisfaction on the Mohéli island, whom normally should assure the country presidency, by virtue of the principle of the rotating turn.
Political negotiations, led for two months by the international community to fix the date of the presidential election and the terms of the period of transition, did not succeed, up today.

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