Sep. 28 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz has traveled to the French capital, Paris, to undergo medical tests, about two weeks after being released after more than a year in detention for alleged corruption.
The former president has indicated in statements to the Radio France Internationale station that his stay in Paris will last two or three weeks and has stressed that “he will return to Mauritania, contrary to what some try to make him believe.”
The coordinator of the Collective of Lawyers of the State of Mauritania, Brahim Ebety, has pointed out that Ould Abdelaziz’s trip “does not worry the Mauritanian State, a civil party in the case” against the former president for alleged corruption.
Ebety has emphasized that, in the event that the former president chooses not to return to the country to continue appearing in court, “Mauritania can resort to international judicial cooperation” to achieve this.
Ould Abdelaziz, arrested in June 2021, was released on September 8, after which his lawyers reiterated that the case against him and his imprisonment pending trial involve measures “outside the law”.
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 the current president and his former ‘dauphin’, Mohamed Ould Ghazuani, in the elections, in which he participated with his support.
