Today, Wednesday, the trial of former Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is scheduled to begin, within the framework of what has been called the decade-long corruption file.
In addition to Ould Abdel Aziz (65 years), who ruled Mauritania between 2009 and 2019, 10 former officials who worked with him, including two prime ministers, are being tried on charges of illegal enrichment, money laundering, and granting unjustified concessions in government deals.
On Tuesday evening, the court ordered the police to arrest the former president and put him in jail as a prelude to his trial.
Social media activists said that the police went to his house and took him to prison.
In a post on his Facebook account hours before his trial, Ould Abdel Aziz said that he would appear before the court for the first time in his life, after 31 years of military service.
The former Mauritanian president denied the accusations of corruption against him, describing them as misleading, and said that he would defend his honor and dignity and "the rights of an entire people" during the trial, and prove the "falsity of the fabricated accusations against him," as he put it.
This is the first trial of a Mauritanian president on charges of corruption and money laundering.
Ould Abdel Aziz is defended by lawyers from Mauritania, France, Senegal and Lebanon, while about 60 lawyers defend the civil side, led by the Mauritanian Bar Association.
And last month, after weeks of deliberation, the Supreme Court - the highest judicial body in Mauritania - rejected an appeal submitted by the defense team to acquit Ould Abdel Aziz, and decided to refer his file to the corruption court after exhausting the stages of appeal and appeal.
The Mauritanian judiciary decided to prosecute the former president and a number of officials during his rule, based on a report prepared by a parliamentary investigation committee, which concluded that there were "excesses, mismanagement and a great waste of money," and said that it had found huge property of the former president and his close associates estimated at $100 million.
However, the former president denies that he seized public money, and says that he is "subject to settling political scores," and that his prosecution aims to silence him and prevent him from practicing politics, and will prove "the falsity of the fabricated accusations against him."