Former President of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz released after more than a year detained for alleged corruption

Sep. 8 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Mauritanian authorities have released former president Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, arrested in June 2021 after being accused of corruption, after which his team of lawyers has reiterated that the case against him and his imprisonment pending trial involve measures “outside of the law”.

The former president’s lawyers have criticized the “invented pretexts” by the Prosecutor’s Office to “prolong the period of illegal detention”, although they have stressed that he was released on Wednesday after all these arguments “expired”, as the portal has collected Mauritanian news Atlas Info.

Thus, they have stressed that the arrest of Ould Abdelaziz was “a serious violation of the Constitution and international treaties and conventions” and have advanced that they will adopt legal measures against those involved in “this crime of forced detention.” For its part, the Prosecutor’s Office has stressed that it will continue to work “decisively” on the case and has defended his actions.

According to information from the magazine ‘Jeune Afrique’, Ould Abdelaziz should receive his passports back to be able to travel, in view of a possible trip to France to undergo medical tests after the cardiac catheterization to which he was subjected several months ago during his detention in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott.

Although the former president’s lawyers then demanded his medical evacuation abroad, three specialists who were following his case in a medical center in Nouakchott indicated in their report that he could continue receiving treatment in the African country.

Ould Abdelaziz asked in December 2021 the current president and his former ‘dolphin’, Mohamed Ould Ghazuani, to stop being a “passive witness to an injustice” and a “grotesque plot” in the face of the open corruption process against him, after denouncing in April the existence of an “intoxication” campaign against him.

The former president was charged in March 2021 with corruption along with ten other people, including two former prime ministers and several former ministers, in the framework of an investigation for crimes allegedly committed during his term as president of the African country.

Ould Abdelaziz, who acceded to the Mauritanian Presidency after winning the elections in 2009 -a year after leading a coup and presiding over the High Council of State during a transition period-, left office in 2019, after the victory of Ould Ghazuani in the elections, to which he concurred with his support.