Amnesty International Report 1996 - Mauritania

Eight opposition activists, all prisoners of conscience, were detained for up to two weeks. Over 50 opposition party supporters were held incommunicado for more than a month, and were possible prisoners of conscience. They were given apparently unfair trials for non-violent political activities; 10 were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. In October, the Minister of the Interior stated publicly that Mauritanian citizens living in exile in Senegal since 1989 were free to return to Mauritania. More than 50,000 people had been expelled from southern Mauritania in 1989 and 1990 and thousands of others had fled to escape widespread human rights violations and other forms of persecution (see Amnesty International Reports 1990 to 1994). However, the Minister's statement failed to address concerns frequently expressed by those in exile about the need to restore confiscated identity papers and guarantee their safety and their civil and political rights if they should return to Mauritania. Nor did he respond to proposals on these issues made in a public memorandum by Tidjane Koïta, an opposition senator and mayor of the southern town of Kaédi, and a report prepared by a Mauritanian parliamentary commission led by Senator Bâ Youssouf. In November the Ministry of the Interior seized an edition of the weekly opposition newspaper Le Calame on three occasions on the grounds that it contravened the press law, which gave the authorities the power to seize any articles critical of the state or of Islam or which could endanger public order. Two opposition leaders, Ahmed Ould Daddah, Secretary General of the Union des Forces Démocratiques (UFD), Union of Democratic Forces, and Hamdi Ould Mouknass, President of the Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (UDP), Union for Democracy and Progress, and at least six other opposition party activists were detained in January following riots in the capital, Nouakchott, which were sparked off by a steep rise in the price of bread. The government accused the two main opposition parties of fomenting unrest, but opposition leaders said that the protests were spontaneous and condemned the violence which occurred. There were further protests after the arrests and about 10 other people were briefly detained. Ahmed Ould Daddah and Hamdi Ould Mouknass, and those detained at the same time, were placed under house arrest outside the capital and released without charge in early February. They were prisoners of conscience. Over 50 people, including both civilians and members of the security forces, were arrested in October and held incommunicado after the government announced the discovery of a spy ring and expelled the Iraqi Ambassador. Those detained were believed to include current and former members of the Mauritanian branch of the Arab Socialist Ba‘th Party, whose headquarters are in Iraq, and members of Attali'à, a political party formed following a split within the Ba‘th party. Both parties were legal in Mauritania. The detainees, who appeared to be possible prisoners of conscience, were alleged by the government to be members of an intelligence network providing information about strategic installations to the Iraqi secret services. During their trial in December, the only evidence produced to support these allegations consisted of testimonies by the accused which they retracted in court, claiming that they had been made under duress. Defence lawyers withdrew in protest after restrictions were placed on the length and content of their submissions by the court's president. Ten of the accused were sentenced to prison terms of between six months and one year and 13 received suspended sentences; 29 others were acquitted. An appeal was lodged by those convicted, but hearings had not started by the end of the year. Amnesty International was concerned about the detention of opposition activists in the context of the bread riots and about the December convictions of possible prisoners of conscience following apparently unfair proceedings. It urged the government to release any prisoners of conscience immediately and unconditionally.