The former president, investigated for corruption, speaks of a “scandal” and criticizes the government
6 Jan. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Mauritanian authorities have prevented former President Mohamed Uld Abdelaziz from boarding a flight at the airport in the capital, Nouakchott, and have proceeded to seize his passport, without the Government having yet ruled on what happened.
Uld Abdelaziz, who is being investigated for alleged corruption, has accused the Mauritanian “regime” of acting personally against him and has stressed that what happened “is a scandal”, according to the Mauritanian newspaper ‘Essirage’.
Thus, he has said that a former president has been prevented from traveling from an airport “that he himself built” and has ensured that his travel plan was coordinated with the Ministry of the Interior, for which he has emphasized that the boarding ban ” it is not legal”.
For this reason, he has denounced that the Ministry of the Interior “controls the country” and “adopts unfair decisions that are not based on any legal basis or have anything to do with the Constitution, which no longer exists.”
Ould Abdelaziz has also charged against his successor and current president, Mohamed Ould Ghazuani, of whom he has said that “he was chosen to manage the country, but he has lost it and order and governance have been lost, just as the country has lost its internal and external credibility”.
The former president made a trip to France in September 2022 to undergo medical tests, about two weeks after being released after more than a year in detention for alleged corruption, accusations that he has rejected and that he attributes to political persecution.
The former president was indicted in March 2021 for 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.
Uld 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 Uld Gazhuani, his former ‘dolphin’ and whom he supported in the elections.
