Yaoundé– Cameroonian President Paul Biya on Monday absolved a French attorney giving 25-year imprisonment for stealing 1.5 million euros (R24,6 m) from public funds.
Biya said in a statement read on state radio that Lydienne Yen-Ayoum, a Cameroonian who acquired French nationality after marrying a Frenchman, would no longer have to serve the remainder of her sentence.
Arrested in January 2008, she was sentenced to 25 years in jail in September 2014 and has so far spent eight years in prison.
The Supreme Court last year upheld the sentence but Yen-Ayoum has always proclaimed her innocence.
“It’s a miracle. She is being freed from prison this evening,” her lawyer Caroline Wassermann said in Paris.
Yen-Ayoum was arrested along with several others in an anti-corruption sweep. Most of those arrested said they were the victims of a political witch-hunt.
