Saturday October 10, 2015
London, GNA
– The President of Djibouti, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, has informed the High Court
in the UK that he would not be appearing to give evidence in the corruption
hearing against his one-time ally, Abdourahman Boreh, which started on October
8.
If he had appeared,
he would have been the first African head of state to do so.
Mr Guelleh’s
sensational climb down came in a letter he sent to Mr Justice Flaux in which he
said that the “higher interests of my country” would not allow him to appear as
a witness in the matter.
The U-turn, having
previously agreed to be a witness, will be an embarrassment for the president
in his long-running personal battle with Mr Boreh, a multimillionaire
businessman.
The government of
Djibouti is claiming that Mr Boreh acquired his wealth through fraudulent and
corrupt means, which he denies.
This hearing is the
second round of a heavyweight legal contest being fought between the government
of Djibouti and Mr Boreh, who says that the claims are politically motivated.
He made similar
claims when in 2009 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in absentia on
charges that he was party to a grenade attack in Djibouti, a pretext that the
government used to apply to the High Court in the UK to freeze Mr Boreh’s
global assets worth millions of pounds.
It eventually turned
out in court that they were trumped up charges brought by the government and Mr
Boreh’s assets were unfrozen.
Last month, in the
light of the allegations of corruption and fraud against Mr Boreh, Mr Justice
Flaux had insisted that Mr Guelleh appeared in court in person to give
evidence.
While Mr Boreh has
been around in the court, senior members of the Djibouti government, including
the president, have been absent.
So, Mr Justice Flaux
argued that if the government wanted to “make good [its] case” President
Guelleh would have to be called as a witness.
In his letter to the
court, the Djiboutian leader noted the precedent his appearance would have
created, adding that his non-appearance was “no disrespect to the English
courts”, which he said he held in high regard.