Mauritania’s former President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (in power 2008-2009 as military ruler, and 2009-2019 as civilian president) faces an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption during his time in office. Here at the blog I last checked in on the story when Ould Abdel Aziz had given an interview to France 24 on September 10; in the interview, as in other press engagements, he dismissed the allegations and the investigation itself as baseless and politically motivated.
In August, Ould Abdel Aziz was held by the Economic Crimes Police for questioning for approximately a week, and then a few days later was briefly questioned again. On September 27 (more here, in Arabic), he was summoned once more, although he does not respond to questions in keeping with his legal team’s argument that he continues to benefit from presidential immunity. Meanwhile, his passport was confiscated in August, but he has now been barred from leaving the capital Nouakchott.
One source I missed in this story was this interview (Arabic) from August with the head of the parliamentary commission of inquiry, Habib Ould Brahim Diah. Jeune Afrique profiled Diah back in May, describing his background in the ruling Union for the Republic (French acronym UPR) party under both Ould Abdel Aziz and current President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani. The interview is worth a read. In it, Diah argues that there has been a clear separation between the executive and the legislature during the parliamentary corruption inquiry, implicitly rejecting Ould Abdel Aziz’s characterization of the inquiry as a political vendetta.
What comes next? On October 1, a new ordinary session of parliament starts – in a “heated atmosphere,” to loosely translate this headline (Arabic). Directly relevant to the corruption inquiry, and to Ould Abdel Aziz’s ultimate legal fate, is the question of (re-)establishing a high court of justice, the sole body constitutionally empowered to try a former head of state. In July, deputies voted to create such a court, so now comes the implementation.
I have no idea how all this ends. A prison term for Ould Abdel Aziz is certainly possible at this point, I’d say. But I could also see a scenario where he simply leaves the country for good. Or a scenario some former ministers get harsh sentences, but not the ex-president. I’m still a bit surprised that the inquiry got this far, actually. I suppose I’ve gotten used to a Sahelian (and global) norm of former heads of state mostly being beyond the reach of the law – although I should add that multiple things can be true at once: Ould Abdel Aziz almost certainly oversaw major corruption, and the parliamentary inquiry is in my view quite obviously politically motivated. You don’t have to pick between those two interpretations.
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