Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi
Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, born June 5, 1958, in Mutsamudu on the island of Anjouan, is a Comorian religious and political figure who served as the eighth President of the Comoros from 2006 to 2011. He is popularly known as Ayatollah. He won the May 14, 2006 presidential election with about 58% of the vote, and his inauguration on May 26, 2006 marked the first peaceful transfer of power in Comorian history.
Sambi is a businessman who owned factories making mattresses, bottled water, and perfume, and he started a TV station called Ulezi. He lives above a shop called The House of Mattresses in Mutsamudu and has seven children, including Intisware and Fatoumat. He has Hadhrami Arab ancestry from Yemen and studied Islamic sciences in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Qom, Iran; in Iran he studied with Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi and earned the nickname Ayatollah despite his Sunni background.
In politics, Sambi ran as an independent and led the Anjouan primary in April 2006 before winning the national election in May. After his presidency, he faced legal trouble. In 2018 he was charged in a case about a plan to sell Comorian passports, involving Bashar Kiwan, with allegations of embezzlement and forgery. He was jailed, and in 2022 he was tried for high treason, embezzlement, and money laundering. On November 28, 2022, he was sentenced to life in prison. Sambi has said that the Comoros should not become an Islamic state, that no one would be forced to wear a veil, and he promised to fight corruption, create jobs, and improve housing for the poor.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 02:45 (CET).