AP Features, August 28th, 2007
Djibouti's top prosecutor and security chief have been summoned to a French court in a probe linked to the death of a French judge in 1995, judicial officials said Tuesday.
Prosecutor-general Djama Souleiman and secret service director Hassan Said Khaireh were not expected to show up for the hearing, their lawyer said.
The two are accused of "intimidation of a witness" and were ordered to appear in court in Versailles, according to a court document dated Aug. 20, Versailles Prosecutor Michel Desplan said.
The summons is linked to an investigation into the death of French judge Bernard Borrel, whose charred body was found in October 1995 in Djibouti, a former French territory.
Borrel's widow alleged that her husband was assassinated and that Djibouti's now-President Ismael Omar Guelleh ordered the crime. French investigators at first supported Djibouti's claims that the judge committed suicide, but recent French medical and legal studies concluded that the judge was murdered.
The French investigation has strained relations between the two countries in recent years.
The case being investigated in Versailles, an offshoot of the primary probe into the judge's death, concerns an alleged attempt to intimidate witness Mohamed Saleh Alhoumekani.
Alhoumekani told investigators he overheard Guelleh and two suspected terrorists talking in the presidential garden Oct. 19, 1995, about getting rid of the "snooping judge." The witness is a former lieutenant in the presidential guard.
"Neither the prosecutor general nor the national security adviser will respond to this summons, because they explained that since judicial cooperation between the two countries has been suspended, they would not receive authorization to go," their lawyer Francis Szpiner said on France-Info radio.
The dead judge's widow, Elisabeth Borrel, welcomed the summons.
"After all, these are not small bureaucrats _ these are senior figures of the Djibouti state. It is they who exercised pressure on the primary witnesses in this case," she said on i-Tele television.
"Things are advancing, as we get closer and closer to the person behind the assassination," she said.
Earlier this year, a French investigating judge summoned Guelleh for questioning about death, though he did not appear.
