Former President Of Mauritania Gets 5-Year Prison Sentence For Corruption

FILE - In this Jan. 20, 2019, file photo, Mauritania's President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, center, attends the Arab Economic and Social Development Summit, in Beirut, Lebanon. A Mauritanian court handed down a five-year sentence to Aziz finding him guilty of money laundering and self-enrichment, his attorneys told The Associated Press on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

BY AHMED MOHAMED AND SAM METZ

NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA (AP) — A Mauritanian court handed down a five-year prison sentence to the country’s former President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz after finding him guilty of money laundering and self-enrichment, his attorneys said Tuesday.

The Monday verdict wraps up a rare corruption trial in west Africa and closes a chapter in the long trajectory of a strongman who helped lead two coups before serving two terms as president and becoming a counterterrorism partner to Western nations including the U.S.



In the landmark 11-month trial, Aziz and other top Mauritanian officials were accused of siphoning money from the country to enrich themselves. It marked a rare instance in which an African leader was tried for corruption, though Aziz’s lawyers long framed the trial as a matter of score-settling between him and current President Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ghazouani.




“This is a political verdict whose ultimate objective is to deprive the president of civic rights,” defense lawyer Taleb Khyar told The Associated Press.


The two men were long allies, but their relations soured after Ghazouani replaced Aziz as president in 2019 in the country’s first peaceful transfer of government since independence.


Ghazouani and Aziz fought over Aziz’s attempts to take over a major political party after leaving office. A parliamentary commission subsequently opened a corruption inquiry against Aziz and 11 other defendants in 2020. In Monday’s verdict, the court cleared four former government ministers — including two prime ministers — of the same charges.


The court ordered the confiscation of Aziz’s illegally acquired property. It dropped several charges, including embezzlement and harm to the public good.


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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco.

Lawyer: Mauritanian Blogger Once Sentenced To Death Is Freed

Image: Wikipedia

BY AHMED MOHAMED SALEM

NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA (AP) — A Mauritanian blogger who had been sentenced to death for comments deemed as blasphemous by authorities has been freed after five years in detention, his lawyer said Tuesday. The release comes two days before the inauguration of the country’s new president.

Mohamed ould Moine said blogger Mohamed ould Cheikh ould Mkhaitir was being accompanied by officials to a destination outside the country, likely for his security. The lawyer said he did not have details about the final destination and that the government had arranged the voyage “under a total blackout.”

Mkhaitir was arrested in 2014 and charged with apostasy over a Facebook post that condemned the use of religion to justify discrimination against his caste. It was the first death sentence handed down for apostasy in Mauritania since the African nation’s independence in 1960.

An appeals court in 2017 changed that sentence to a fine and to two years in prison after the supreme court said it accepted his repentance, despite calls for his execution by thousands of demonstrators. While the blogger had already served the time, he was held in detention until now.

Mauritania, a West African desert nation and moderate Islamic republic, was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1981 but did not criminalize it until 2007. While human rights group allege that tens of thousands of people still live in slavery, the government denies it is widespread.

President-elect Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, recently elected to a five-year term, will be inaugurated on Thursday. The retired general served as defense minister before becoming the chosen successor to Mauritania’s retiring president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who was barred from seeking a third term under Mauritania’s constitution.

“By freeing Mkhaitir three days before stepping down as president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz has addressed one of the most heinous injustices of his 10-year tenure,” Lama Fakih, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. The rights group said family members and United Nations rapporteurs had noted the blogger’s “deteriorating health while in detention.”

This is Mauritania’s first peaceful transfer of power since its independence from France in 1960. The country has suffered five coups and has been led by military rulers for much of that time.

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Mauritania Votes As 1st Peaceful Transfer Of Power Expected

In this Jan. 20, 2019, file photo, Mauritania's President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, center, attends the Arab Economic and Social Development Summit, in Beirut, Lebanon. Mauritanians are going to the polls on Saturday, June 22, 2019, as his preferred successor faces five opposition candidates in the West African nation threatened by Islamic extremism. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

BY AHMED MOHAMED

NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA (AP) — Mauritanians on Saturday went to the polls as the outgoing president’s preferred successor faced five opposition candidates in this West African nation threatened by Islamic extremism. It is expected to be the country’s first peaceful transfer of power.

One candidate of sub-Saharan African descent wants to improve race relations in a country where activists estimate tens of thousands of people still live in slavery despite the practice being banned by the government for decades.

Amnesty International has called on the next president to end rampant human rights abuses in this coastal Saharan nation of 4.5 million people.

“Anyone who dares to stand up against slavery, discrimination and other human rights violations and abuses is at risk of arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention and even torture,” said Kine Fatim Diop, a West Africa campaigner for the rights organization.

Mauritania has suffered five coups since independence from France in 1960 and has been led by military rulers for much of that time. President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz himself was head of the presidential guard when he seized power in a 2008 coup. He said he did so to prevent a return to repressive military rule.

He won a landslide election the following year in what opponents called a fraudulent “electoral coup.” Most opposition parties then boycotted the 2014 election in which Aziz won 82 percent of the vote according to official results.

The president is barred by the constitution from seeking another term. In respecting term limits instead of seeking to change the constitution he contrasts with several leaders elsewhere in Africa in recent years.

His successor of choice is former Defense Minister Mohamed Ould El Ghazouani, a retired general who served as chief of staff of Mauritania’s armed forces.

Ghazouani was chosen by the ruling majority as a presidential candidate after his retirement. He has campaigned on his security credentials and the outgoing president’s record on fighting Islamic extremists.

“Mauritania has to choose between Mohamed Ould El Ghazouani — who wants to strive toward security, development and progress — or vote for a return to insecurity, bad management and corruption where there is hate, racism and destruction of national unity,” the outgoing president said at a press conference marking the end of campaigning.

This moderate Islamic republic borders Mali, where jihadist rule forced tens of thousands to flee the country’s north to Mauritania in 2012. While the security situation has deteriorated in Mali even after the extremists were ousted from control, Mauritania has not seen the spillover in violence experienced by Mali’s other neighbors Niger and Burkina Faso.

Mauritania is a member of the G5 Sahel regional counterterrorism force , which was established in 2017 but has been plagued by funding problems.

The opposition candidates in this election include anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, who was elected to Parliament in September from his prison cell, where he was held on charges his supporters called politically motivated. He was released late last year after serving four months.

Mauritania was the last country to abolish slavery, doing so in 1981, but did not criminalize it until 2007. Late last year the United States ended trade benefits with Mauritania, saying the country is not making sufficient progress toward combating forced labor, including slavery.

The Mauritanian government, however, denies that slavery is widespread.

Candidate Kane Hamidou Baba of the “Living Together” coalition is representing parties backed by Mauritanians of sub-Saharan African descent.

Other candidates include Sidi Mohamed ould Boubacar, a two-time former prime minister who is supported by the opposition Islamist party; Mohamed ould Maouloud, candidate of the Opposition Coalition for Change and Mohamed Lemine El Mourteji Wafi, who hopes to draw the support of younger Mauritanians.

A runoff election will take place next month if no one receives a majority of votes on Saturday.

Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.

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Man's Harrowing Journey To US Underscores Immigration Shift

In this Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, photo, Abdoulaye Camara, an immigrant from Mauritania, waits at the Dasmesh Darbar Sikh temple in Salem, Ore. Camara was one of 124 migrants who were detained near the border with Mexico in May 2018, and sent to a federal prison in Oregon, the result of the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

In this Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, photo, Karandeep Singh, right, serves a bowl of curry to Abdoulaye Camara at the Dasmesh Darbar Sikh temple in Salem, Ore. Both are immigrants who were recently freed from the federal prison in Sheridan, Ore. Singh was released in late August 2018, and Camara had been released that afternoon. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)
BY ANDREW SELSKY

SALEM, OREGON. (AP) — The young man traversed Andean mountains, plains and cities in buses, took a harrowing boat ride in which five fellow migrants drowned, walked through thick jungle for days, and finally reached the U.S.-Mexico border.

Then Abdoulaye Camara, from the poor West African country of Mauritania, asked U.S. officials for asylum.

Camara’s arduous journey highlights how immigration to the United States through its southern border is evolving. Instead of being almost exclusively people from Latin America, the stream of migrants crossing the Mexican border these days includes many who come from the other side of the world.

Almost 3,000 citizens of India were apprehended entering the U.S. from Mexico last year. In 2007, only 76 were. The number of Nepalese rose from just four in 2007 to 647 last year. More people from Africa are also seeking to get into the United States, with hundreds having reached Mexican towns across the border from Texas in recent weeks, according to local news reports from both sides of the border.

Camara’s journey began more than a year ago in the small town of Toulel, in southern Mauritania. He left Mauritania, where slavery is illegal but still practiced, “because it’s a country that doesn’t know human rights,” he said.

Camara was one of 124 migrants who ended up in a federal prison in Oregon after being detained in the U.S. near the border with Mexico in May, the result of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.

He was released Oct. 3, after he had passed his “credible fear” exam, the first step on obtaining asylum, and members of the community near the prison donated money for his bond. He was assisted by lawyers working pro bono.

“My heart is so gracious, and I am so happy. I really thank my lawyers who got me out of that detention,” Camara said in French as he rode in a car away from the prison.

Camara’s journey was epic, yet more people are making similar treks to reach the United States. It took him from his village on the edge of the Sahara desert to Morocco by plane and then a flight to Brazil. He stayed there 15 months, picking apples in orchards and saving his earnings as best he could. Finally he felt he had enough to make it to the United States.

All that lay between him and the U.S. border was 6,000 miles (9,700 kilometers).

“It was very, very difficult,” said Camara, 30. “I climbed mountains, I crossed rivers. I crossed many rivers, the sea.”

Camara learned Portuguese in Brazil and could understand a lot of Spanish, which is similar, but not speak it very well. He rode buses through Brazil, Peru and Colombia. Then he and others on the migrant trail faced the most serious obstacle: the Darien Gap, a 60-mile (97-kilometer) stretch of roadless jungle straddling the border of Colombia and Panama.

But first, he and other travelers who gathered in the town of Turbo, Colombia, had to cross the Gulf of Uraba, a long and wide inlet from the Caribbean Sea. Turbo, on its southeast shore, has become a major point on the migrant trail, where travelers can resupply and where human smugglers offer boat rides.

Camara and about 75 other people boarded a launch for Capurgana, a village next to the Panamanian border on the other end of the gulf.

While the slow-moving boat was far from shore, the seas got very rough.

“There was a wave that came and tipped over the canoe,” Camara said. “Five people fell into the water, and they couldn’t swim.”

They all drowned, he said. The survivors pushed on.

Finally arriving in Capurgana after spending two nights on the boat, the migrants split into smaller groups to cross the infamous Darien Gap, a wild place that has tested the most seasoned of travelers. The thick jungle hides swamps that can swallow a man. Lost travelers have died, and been devoured, boots and all, by packs of wild boars, or have been found, half out of their minds.

Camara’s group consisted of 37 people, including women — two of them pregnant, one from Cameroon and one from Congo — and children.

“We walked seven days and climbed up into the mountains, into the forest,” Camara said. “When it was night, we slept on the ground. We just kept walking and sleeping, walking and sleeping. It was hard.”

One man, who was around 26 and from the African nation of Guinea, died, perhaps from exhaustion combined with thirst, Camara said.

By the sixth day, all the drinks the group had brought with them were gone. They drank water from a river. They came across a Panamanian man and his wife, who sold them some bananas for $5, Camara said.

Once he got out of the jungle, Camara went to Panamanian immigration officials who gave him travel documents enabling him to go on to Costa Rica, which he reached by bus. In Costa Rica, he repeated that process in hopes of going on to Nicaragua. But he heard authorities there were not so accommodating, so he and about 100 other migrants took a boat around Nicaragua, traveling at night along its Pacific coast.

“All we could see were the lights of Nicaragua,” he said. Then it was over land again, in cars, buses and sometimes on foot, across Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, all the way to the U.S. border at Tijuana. He was just about out of money and spent the night in a migrant shelter.

On May 20, he crossed into San Ysidro, south of San Diego.

“I said, ‘I came, I came. I’m from Africa. I want help,’” he said.

He is going to stay with a brother in Philadelphia while he pursues his asylum request.

Andrew Selsky on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewselsky

US Congress Lashes IMF On Slave State

BY YASSINE CHAMACK

Thomas N’diye, crippled with polio but still active in politics, leads protestors on a march to the Mauritania embassy in Paris. Image via CAJ News

CASSABLANCA, MOROCCO (CAJ NEWS)--In language rarely seen among nations, some of Donald Trump’s closest allies have attacked an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to Mauritania, accusing the country of torture, theft and slavery.

Six of Donald Trump’s most senior Republicans in Congress have taken the unusual step of going over the White House and cabinet to condemn one of Washington’s closest allies in Africa.

The congressmen have written to Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, and asked her to end funding to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in West Africa.

Gone is the diplomatic waffle of politics, replaced by a condemnation of President Mohamed Aziz that goes beyond even the tweets of Mr Trump, accusing Mauritania and its government of theft, slavery, corruption and a “heinous human rights record”.

The letter dated 5 March was signed by a clutch of names you might not know, but they are men who backed Trump early in his rise, and all are crucial to getting his bills through congress.

– Mark Meadows of North Carolina is one of the president’s closest friends and chairs the Freedom Caucus, a 40-strong groups of politicians who have the numbers to make or break legislation.

– Thomas Garrett from Virginia is a former army officer and a rising star in the Republican Party.

– Jeff Duncan among the strongest supporters of Mr Trump in Congress and sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, along with Lee Zeldin and Scott Perry, both of whom signed the letter.

– Gus Bilirakis of Florida has a name for calling out bad leaders, but not in this kind of language.

True, Mr Aziz runs one of the most oppressive governments anywhere, but the US befriends any number of nasties including Djibouti, China and Saudi Arabia.

And Congress is careful to leave foreign policy to the executive, knowing how easily a loose word in the house can damage trade, defence and the so-called “War on terror.”

But in what has been dubbed the “Mauritania Memo”, the House appears to have put Mr Trump on notice that in plans to take a more aggressive role.

Mauritania covers more than a million square kilometres — mostly desert — and tops the list as having more slaves per capita than any country in the world. But its government is squarely against groups like al Qaeda, al Shabaab and Boko Harum, and allows US troops free reign in tracking them
down.

The IMF recently approved a $163m line of credit that Christine Lagarde tweeted would improve living standards for Mauritanians who suffer a level of poverty that’s harsh even by African standards.

But the Congressional letter claims this money will “line the pockets” of president Aziz whom it accuses of “rigged contracts” for all types of business along with bribes and corruption.

“Up to 20% of Mauritania’s population is estimated to be enslaved, the highest rate worldwide,” the letter says.

Aziz has “denied entry to human rights groups, employed torture and detained opposition leaders without cause.”

And it closes with a call for action. “If President Aziz continues to foster an environment unrecognisable to international norms,” then the IMF boss should end funding to ensure the fund does not “become complicit in the Aziz regime”.

In Paris where thousands of Mauritanians have fled to exile, protests are common outside the country’s embassy. And always there is Thomas N’diaye who has long called on the French government to clamp down on its former colony.

Mauritania Holds Elections

Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz

Nouakchott (AFP)-- Mauritanians voted on Saturday in nationwide elections overshadowed by a widespread boycott of opposition parties, with all eyes on the performance of an Islamist party allowed to take part for the first time.

The mainly-Muslim republic, a former French colony on the west coast of the Sahara desert, is seen as strategically important in the fight against al-Qaeda-linked groups within its own borders, as well in neighbouring Mali and across Africa's Sahel region.

"I think these elections today are a victory for democracy in my country," President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz said after visiting his local polling station in Nouakchott.

Around a third of Mauritania's 3.4 million people are eligible to vote in the first parliamentary and local polls since 2006, a test of strength for Abdel Aziz five years after he came to power in a coup and four years after he won a widely contested presidential vote.

His Union for the Republic (UPR) is expected to retain power but opinion is divided over whether the main Islamist party Tewassoul, only legalised in 2007, will provide a serious challenge to the favourites sink back into obscurity following the election.

Some 1 500 candidates from 74 parties representing the administration and the so-called "moderate" opposition are registered to vie for 147 seats in parliament and the leadership of 218 local councils dotted across the shifting sands of the vast nation.

The process of voting appeared more complicated and arduous than had been expected and long queues began to build up outside polling stations in the capital.

Voters, most of whom are illiterate, faced the difficult task of finding the symbol for their party among several electoral lists covering parliamentary and council seats.

Towards the end of the morning many stations were tripling the number of booths available for casting ballots.
"I came in the early morning, I have just voted. There was a long wait but I have done my duty," said an elderly woman at a Nouakchott polling station.

Jihadist fringe

Party activists near several polling stations discreetly tried to canvas last-minute support, breaking election law.

"I know propaganda is forbidden near polling stations on election day, but everyone is doing," said a campaigner called Rabia when challenged by a journalist.

Tewassoul is the only member of the so-called "radical" opposition, the 11-party Co-ordination of Democratic Opposition (COD), contesting the polls after its coalition partners said they would "boycott this electoral masquerade".

The party, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, professes to hold more moderate beliefs than the country's jihadist fringe and draws support from female voters and Mauritania's young, urban middle-class -- although it has just four seats in parliament.

It describes its participation as a form of struggle against the "dictatorship" of Abdel Aziz.

Party leader Jemil Ould Mansour complained of rule-breaking in the voting process after casting his ballot.
"I note that deficiencies have been observed by our members, including a campaign inside a polling station by its manager in favour of one particular party and the refusal in some places to let our representatives into polling stations," he said.

The UPR is the only party fielding candidates in every constituency, making it a strong favourite over Tewassoul, its closest rival, and the People's Progressive Alliance of parliament leader Messaoud Ould Boulkheir.

Political stalemate

"I hope that this election will end the political stalemate that exists and I think the door of dialogue should remain open to achieve this," Ould Boulkheir said.

Following independence from France and the ensuing one-party government of Moktar Ould Daddah, deposed in 1978, Mauritania had a series of military rulers until its first multi-party election in 1992.
Abdel Aziz seized power in a 2008 coup and was elected a year later, but the COD has never accepted his rule as legitimate and demanded he make way for a neutral leader to administer the vote.

"We made the necessary effort to ensure that everyone could participate in these elections but, unfortunately, not all the parties were involved," the president said after casting his ballot.

"I think, unfortunately for them, they missed an opportunity, an important date, because they find themselves in a situation where they will be absent from the National Assembly and therefore the political debate."