Mohamed Bacar

Soon afterwards, the French government confirmed that Bacar had fled to Mayotte. He requested that France grant him political asylum, and the French government said that it was considering the request. The Comoran government asked France to hand him over so that it could put him on trial; it had issued an international arrest warrant for Bacar. Subsequently, the French moved Bacar to the nearby island of Réunion on the night of March 27–28, along with 23 of his supporters who accompanied him when he fled to Mayotte. It was thought that he would be charged on Réunion with weapons possession and illegal entry due to his arrival on Mayotte by speedboat. Comoran President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi said that if the French objected to extraditing Bacar to Comoros, where the death penalty is allowed, then it could send him to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for trial. Thousands of Comorans participated in a protest on March 28 to demand that Bacar be extradited; it was widely believed in the Comoros that France secretly worked to protect him. In its extradition request, the Comoran government accused Bacar of "embezzlement of public funds, homicide, rape, torture and other abuses against the people of Anjouan".

Since this time the situation had deteriorated markedly and the government of Comoros determined that talks had failed and a military solution was required. During February and March 2008 troops from the Comoros with support from the African Union began massing for an amphibious assault of the island of Anjouan and the termination of the presidency of Mohamed Bacar. Agence France-Presse reported that 'the first batch' of African Union troops arrived in the Comoros Islands on March 20, 2008, while the BBC reported that the first African Union troops arrived on March 11, 2008.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse on March 12, 2008, Bacar said that he had "always been open to dialogue" and that there should be a round table to discuss Comoran problems. He said that holding a new election in Anjouan would be acceptable if a round table was in favor of it. According to Bacar, some of the countries backing military intervention are undemocratic themselves, and it was hypocritical for them to try to "give [Anjouan] lessons in democracy"; he said that an invasion would ultimately solve nothing and that he was ready to fight and die if necessary.

In his trial for weapons possession and illegal entry at the Saint-Denis Court of Appeal, Bacar's lawyers argued that Bacar and his men had needed the weapons for self-defense when they travelled from Anjouan to Mayotte and that they had surrendered the weapons to the police on Mayotte upon arrival. On June 5, 2008, Bacar was acquitted on the charge of illegal entry but was given a suspended sentence of three months imprisonment for entering the country with weapons.

On June 24, 2008, the Saint-Denis Court of Appeal ruled against extraditing Bacar to the Comoros. With all his appeals exhausted, Bacar, his brother, and two of his men were expelled from Réunion on the morning of July 19. They were taken to Cotonou, Benin, on a French government flight; the Beninese government had agreed to allow Bacar to stay in Benin. Bacar said that on this occasion that he intended to stay there for as long as his presence was allowed, and he expressed a desire to "reflect on our past errors". Comoran government spokesman Abdourahim Said Bakar said that the government was "disappointed" by the expulsion of Bacar to Benin, reiterating the government's position that he should face trial in the Comoros or before an international court.

With the decree (EG) Nr. 243/2008 from 17. March 2008 the European Commission introduced restrictive measures against Bacar's former government. All financial and commercial resources of Mohamed Bacar, Jaffar Salim, Mhamed Abdou Madi, Ali Mchindra, Houmadi Souf, Rehema Boinali, Dhoihirou Halidi and Abdou Bacar are frozen. This also affects all companies, corporations, foundations and so on of these persons. Every payment or financial or commercial help to these people has to be approved. A person who gives money or other resources to these people may be prosecuted in Germany as a criminal according to § 34 Abs. 4 Nr. 2 German foreign trade law. Other European countries have different laws on this purpose.

On April 26, 2007, the country's Federal Constitutional Court proclaimed the Presidency of Anjouan vacant, declaring Bacar's period in office after his first term ended on April 14 to be illegal. Two days later, Comorian President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, with the support of the African Union (AU), appointed M. Dhoihirou Halidi as interim President of Anjouan. However, he was never allowed to take office and Bacar, in defiance of both the Union of Comoros government and the AU, independently organised a presidential election. The Union government withheld election material from Anjouan to try and prevent the poll from taking place, but Bacar printed his own ballot papers, went ahead with the vote on 10 June and claimed a landslide victory of 90 percent. He was inaugurated for a second term as the President of Anjouan on 14 June.

Colonel Mohamed Bacar (born May 5, 1962 in Barakani, Anjouan, then a French colony) was President of Anjouan, one of the three autonomous islands that make up the Union of the Comoros, from 2001 to 2008. He is a former chief of police on Anjouan and has studied extensively in France and the United States. He was part of a military coup on Anjouan in August 2001 and soon became President. It is alleged he rigged the elections to become the first president of Anjouan in March 2002, in part due to his leading role in the separatist movement. He was ousted by the combined forces of the Government of the Union of Comoros and the African Union in the March 2008 invasion of Anjouan.