Former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz denounced Thursday evening in Nouakchott “a settling of scores” and “arbitrary detention”, three days after a weeklong police interrogation on suspicion of corruption.
“I am the victim of a settling of scores but I will defend myself,” Mr. Aziz assured at a press conference.
“I spent seven days in unjust arbitrary detention while I came voluntarily in my car to state security,” said the former Mauritanian leader from 2008 to 2019. This is his first statement public since his departure from power in August 2019.
“I did not answer any questions because the procedure is illegal”, he indicated, while specifying “to have confidence in the justice” of his country.
Mr. Aziz went on August 17 to the headquarters of the General Directorate of National Security, responding to a summons.
At the end of this police interrogation on August 24, he was not charged but his passport was withheld. He forbids him to leave Nouakchott, according to his lawyer, Taghioullah Aïda.
Mr. Aziz must respond to “strong presumptions of bad governance and misappropriation of public property”, a security source previously told AFP.
President Aziz took power in this poor West African country of 4.5 million people in a military coup in 2008, then won the presidential election in 2009 and 2014.
The current president, Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, who succeeded him in August 2019, was his chief of staff and Minister of Defense.
Mr. Aziz has since been marginalized by the new power. In December 2019, he lost the leadership of the Union for the Republic (UPR), a party he nevertheless founded.
“The parliamentary commission of inquiry is illegally composed. I know perfectly well all the members of this (commission) and why they are there. Each of its members carries out cases which disqualify him”, affirmed Thursday evening, without further details Mr. Aziz.
A parliamentary commission, tasked in January with shedding light on several issues during his years at the head of state, transmitted its report to the Mauritanian justice in early August.
Among the files studied by the parliamentary committee are the management of oil revenues, the sale of State estates in Nouakchott, the liquidation of a public company which ensured the supply of foodstuffs or the activities of a Chinese company. fishing, Pully Hong Dong, according to parliamentary sources.
Former President Aziz ignored a summons from the parliamentary committee in early July. The deputies then voted at the end of July a law establishing a High Court of Justice, competent to judge the Head of State and the ministers in the event of “high treason”.
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