Mauritania: Working group issues opinion in case of 18 detainees

Alkarama for Human Rights, 10 juin 2007

To recapitulate, a wave of arrests between April and June 2005 hit opposition personalities, presidents of associations, professors, a lawyer, a journalist, each of a variety of political currents, along with simple citizens known for having expressed points of view critical of government policy.  All of these were secretly detained for 20 to 44 days and suffered serious torture and particularly inhuman and degrading treatment.

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had addressed a communication to the Mauritanian government on 20 December 2006.  The government responded that “these people were arrested in connection with a matter related to State security and were accused of belonging to an extremist group working outside of any legal framework, calling for violence and using mosques for the purpose of sectarian political propaganda…”

Following the examination of this file during its session of 7-11 May 2007, the working group issued an opinion (no. 6/2007) in which it “considers the continued detention of these people despite the final judgement of the Chambre d’Accusation of the Nouakchott Court of Appeals ordering their provisional release constitutes a violation of the principle of the legality of every measure of detention.  Depriving them of liberty therefore has no more judicial foundation, due to the final judgement ordering their provisional release, a decision which the authorities have refused to execute.

Depriving the aforementioned 18 people of liberty is arbitrary insofar as it contradicts the dispositions of Articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…”