Comoros president's attacker found dead in prison: prosecutor

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 took place on Friday afternoon during a funeral for a well-known religious leader in Salimani-Itsandra, a village near the capital Moroni.

Prosecutor Ali Mohamed Djounaid said the dead man was a 24-year-old soldier called Ahmed Abdou from the same village where the attack took place.

He had assaulted 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 Saturday.

"A doctor declared him dead."

The government declined to detail the president's injuries, saying only that he had needed "stitches to his scalp".

Government spokeswoman Fatima Ahamada said Saturday that 65-year-old Azali 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.

- Investigation underway -

Djounaid said Abdou was overcome by the president's security detail and handed over to investigators but the latter did "not have time to question him" before he died.

"An inquiry is underway into the reasons for the young man's attempt on the president's life.

"There will also be an inquiry into the circumstances of his death," the prosecutor added, though there was no indication an autopsy had been carried out.

The young man's body was handed over to his family and he was quickly buried according to Muslim tradition, a family source said on condition of anonymity.

The vast majority of the Comoros archipelago's 870,000 inhabitants are Muslim.

"The burial took place in a heavy atmosphere in front of a large, mostly young crowd," Daoudou Abdallah Mohamed, head of the Orange opposition party, told AFP.

"There's a feeling of incomprehension in the village," he said, asking that "light be shed on the circumstances and conditions" of his death.

Authorities said Abdou had been in the military police for two years and had failed to return to his unit on September 11 after being given 24 hours' leave.

A witness at Friday's funeral for the late religious leader, who asked to remain anonymous, said he had been "like crazy".

"He lunged at the head of state, attacking him first with a knife and then with his fists."

If another mourner had not intervened, "I think the president wouldn't have escaped safely," he said.