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/ 21 December 2008
Mauritania’s military junta on Sunday freed the country’s ousted President, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, from house arrest.
Police broke up an anti-government march by beating protesters with clubs and launching tear gas into the crowd in Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott.
Most of Mauritania’s political parties on Monday joined forces to back this month’s military coup, as a rally supporting the coup drew thousands.
Deputies in Mauritania’s National Assembly have called for special moves that could open the way for a trial of the ousted president.
Mauritania’s coup leaders have announced they will appoint a government to run the country until new elections.
The army general who successfully toppled Mauritania’s government staged a show of force on Thursday.
Mauritanian security forces recaptured five suspected al-Qaeda militants on Wednesday, including a fugitive accused of killing four French tourists, officials said. The December 24 killing of the French tourists and a shooting attack against the Israeli embassy in Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, in February raised fears of a rise in Islamic violence.
Police and troops in Mauritania, armed with tear gas and automatic weapons, on Tuesday stormed a building in Nouakchott hunting for Islamic extremists but their quarry managed to escape, security sources said. An operational bomb factory was found in the abandoned house, police said.
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/ 1 February 2008
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the Israeli embassy in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott early on Friday, police said. The attackers exchanged fire with guards at the embassy. A nearby bar in the centre of Nouakchott was also hit before the assailants fled.
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/ 25 December 2007
Gunmen shot dead four members of a French family on Monday, including at least two children, and badly wounded the father in south-west Mauritania, the French embassy in Nouakchott said. The attack happened at Aleg, 250km east of the capital, a security source said, adding that the gunmen were unidentified.
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/ 16 November 2007
Mauritanian President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi ordered villages to stockpile food to help cushion the effect of rising inflation, his economic adviser said on Thursday. About six thousand tonnes of wheat had already been put aside for the stocks as part of a bid to stabilise prices.
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/ 9 November 2007
The government in Mauritania on Friday defended its handling of food riots this week, claiming that violent protests in opposition strongholds that left one dead were deliberately orchestrated. In the north-west African nation’s coastal capital, Nouakchott, several dozen youths on Friday hurled rocks at buildings.
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/ 7 November 2007
At least 47 migrants died trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands after drifting for more than two weeks off the west coast of Africa in two boats, police sources in Mauritania said on Tuesday. Mauritania soldiers discovered 42 bodies in the sea near the northern port city of Nouadhibou.
A hearing in the trial of a Mauritanian editor of independent daily El Bedil Athalith, charged with slandering the first lady, was on Monday postponed indefinitely. The Arabic newspaper alleged in articles that the first lady had abused her position as wife of the head of state to raise funds for a charity organisation she headed.
Authorities seized cocaine worth more than -million on Monday in Mauritania’s capital — the country’s largest haul ever, officials said. Security agents arrested five people — two Moroccans, a Senegalese and two Mauritanians with 830kg of cocaine, said state prosecutor Ben Amar Ould Veten.
She struggles under her own weight, lumbering up the stairs, her thighs shaking with each step. Once she reaches the top, it will take several minutes for 50-year-old Mey Mint to catch her breath, the air hissing painfully in and out of her chest. Her rippling flesh is not the result of careless overeating, but rather of a tradition of force-feeding girls in a desert nation where obesity has long been the ideal of beauty.
Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi won Mauritania’s historic presidential election with 52,85% of the vote, the interior minister said on Monday. Ould Abdallahi, who was backed by supporters of Mauritania’s ousted dictator Maaouiya Ould Taya and who has vowed to become a ”reassuring president”, beat Ahmed Ould Daddah in the second-round run-off of the poll.
Mauritanians voted on Sunday in a presidential run-off between a former technocrat and a veteran opposition leader, the last stage of returning civilian rule to the Islamic state bordering the Sahara. The vote follows an inconclusive first round poll two weeks ago and seals a democratic handover by the army junta.
Mauritanians vote on Sunday to choose a civilian president, completing a handover of power by a military junta that took control of the Islamic state on the western edge of the Sahara in a 2005 coup. Voters and international observers hope the poll can establish a multi-party democracy in the largely desert former French colony.
Mauritania has protested to Libya over comments by its leader, Moammar Gadaffi, in which he called Mauritanians ”tribal” and said they were wasting their time with multi-party elections, the official news agency said. Mauritania, a Saharan Islamic state that straddles Arab and black Africa, is holding elections this Sunday to select a civilian president to take over from a military junta.
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/ 4 December 2006
Former opposition parties and independent candidates have won Mauritania’s first parliamentary election since the ouster of Maaouiya Ould Taya, who ruled for 21 years, state media said on Monday. A coalition of ex-opposition parties has won 41 seats of the 95 seats in the new National Assembly after Sunday’s second round of voting.
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/ 22 November 2006
European Union observers on Wednesday commended the good conduct of weekend parliamentary and municipal elections held in Mauritania after a military coup, saying there were no major irregularities. ”The elections were carried out in … a free, open and fair political environment,” said Marie-Anne Isler Beguin, head of the EU’s election observation mission.
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/ 19 November 2006
Mauritanians began voting on Sunday in the Islamic republic’s first elections since the end of 21 years of authoritarian rule in a bloodless coup 15 months ago. Voting commenced at 7am local time and Mauritanians have 12 hours to cast their ballots at 2 336 polling stations scattered across this mainly Sahara desert country straddling West Africa and Arab North Africa.
Voters in the poverty stricken West African nation of Mauritania overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution in a weekend referendum, Interior Ministry officials said on Monday. Officials said that based on early returns they believed that 80% to 90% voted on Sunday to approve the Constitution.
French driver Thierry Magnaldi won the eighth stage of the Dakar Rally on Saturday as two-time defending champion Stephane Peterhansel regained the overall lead in his Mitsubishi. Magnaldi, in a Schlesser-Ford, took the 508km stage from Atar to Nouakchott in five hours and 56 seconds to celebrate his second stage win on this year’s event.
African Union envoys who met Mauritania’s new military strongman said on Wednesday they were reassured by the country’s junta leaders, and urged them to follow a plan to hold democratic elections in less than two years. Pointedly, they said nothing about restoring to power the country’s exiled president.
Mauritania’s self-declared head of state named a new prime minister to replace the former premier who resigned along with his Cabinet after last week’s coup. A judge also freed 21 people who had been detained for plotting against the ousted regime. Junta leader Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall named Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar as prime minister.
African leaders have condemned the coup in the West African state of Mauritania, saying the days of authoritarianism and military rule must end across the continent. A military junta toppled Mauritania’s autocratic president while he was abroad, replacing him with the longtime chief of this oil-rich desert nation’s police force.
A group of army officers in Mauritania announced the overthrow of President Maaoya Sid’Ahmed Taya on Wednesday. Earlier, troops took control of the national radio and television stations and seized a building housing the army chief of staff’s headquarters while the president was out of the country.
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/ 28 February 2005
In the wooden shanty town of Elmina on the outskirts of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, Aids educators do not let religious or cultural conservatism get in their way. A wooden dummy of a penis fitted with a condom is used to instruct people about the dangers of unprotected sex — a somewhat unexpected sight in a country that is almost entirely Muslim, and where discussions about sex have tended to be taboo.
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/ 13 October 2004
The Mauritanian government has arrested Saleh Ould Hanenna, the mastermind of last year’s military uprising against President Maaouiya Ould Taya, who had been on the run for 16 months. Attorney General Mohamed El Ghaith Ould Oumar said the former army major was caught on Saturday in Rosso, a town on the southern border with Senegal.
Mauritania arrested several military officers on Monday in an alleged assassination plot against President Maaoya Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya, military sources said. There was no immediate confirmation or denial from the West African nation’s government.