Detained ex-Mauritania president hospitalised

Former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz was moved to the Nouakchott Military Hospital on Wednesday evening in order to receive emergency care, his attorney told AFP yesterday.

Mohamed Eddine Ould Ashdo went on to call on authorities to clear his client for travel abroad for care.

“Some members of his family visited him and said that his condition was worrying but stable.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday his family said they “fear for his physical liquidation” by the regime which “failed in its attempts to liquidate him politically.”

Abdel Aziz held the office of the president from 2008 to 2019. In March, an investigative judge in Nouakchott indicted him on charges of corruption, money laundering, illicit enrichment, waste of public property, granting undue benefits, and obstruction of justice.

In August, the Supreme Court in the capital upheld a decision to imprison the former president and continue a probe focused on financial corruption during his time in office.

A request for his conditional release, made in November, was rejected.

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