Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Mauritania.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Mauritania. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Mauritania U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/mauritania/
[accessed 28 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The constitution
prohibits torture. The law considers torture, acts of torture, and inhuman or
degrading punishments as crimes against humanity not subject to a statute of
limitations. The law specifically covers activities in prisons,
rehabilitation centers for minors in conflict with the law, places of
custody, psychiatric institutions, detention centers, areas of transit, and
border crossing points. On May 23, three
officers with the Traffic Safety Police arrested and harassed a group of
young persons. Video of the arrest was widely shared on social media and
showed the officers kicking and harassing the group. The officers involved
were arrested and immediately removed from the Traffic Safety Police Force. Complaints filed
with the courts for allegations of torture were submitted to police for
investigation. The government continued to deny the existence of “unofficial”
detention centers, even though NGOs and the United Nations pointed out their
continuing usage. Neither the MNP nor the National Human Rights Commission
(CNDH) directly addressed the existence of these places. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Prison conditions
remained life threatening due to persistent food shortages, violence,
inadequate sanitary conditions, lack of adequate medical care, and indefinite
pretrial detention. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Pretrial Detention:
Lengthy pretrial detention remained a serious problem, although no statistics
on the average length of detention were available. Torture Against
Terrorism Hannah Armstrong,
International Herald Tribune, Nouakchott, 7 May 2013 latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/fighting-terrorism-in-mauritania-even-it-means-torture/ [accessed 8 May
2013] Outside our tent on
a beach about 100 miles north of the capital, the Atlantic Ocean was
glittering under the midday sun and a fresh tuna was searing on a grill.
Inside, the conversation with my Mauritanian friends turned to torture and
detention. One described how he’d been chained up naked for weeks; another
talked about his brother who had a pin inserted under his fingernails. Both
victims had been arrested during a crackdown on political dissidents in 2003,
in the twilight of the 21-year dictatorship of Maaouya Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya. Taya was deposed in
2005, but torture, which has been moored in Mauritania’s security apparatus
for decades, has continued. But the costs of this
success are great. According to Aminetou Mint Ely, leader of the Association
of Women Heads of Households, who regularly conducts prison visits with
Amnesty International, Salafist prisoners are often hung naked from a metal
bar in the so-called jaguar position, with their hands and feet tied. Then
they are beaten or burned with cigarettes. In May 2011, 14 men
convicted of terrorism were taken at night from Nouakchott’s central prison.
They have not been heard from since. (Several sources told me they are being
held at a black site prison in the country’s interior.) Amnesty International
has documented more than 60 cases of torture in Mauritanian prisons since
2010. Three men sentenced
to death after torture Amnesty
International AI, 27 May 2010 -- UA: 124/10 Index: AFR 38/002/2010 Mauritania www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/36000/afr380022010en.pdf [accessed 8 January
2019] The three
Mauritanian men, Sidi Ould Sidna, Maarouf Ould Haiba and Mohamed Ould
Chabarnou, were sentenced to death on 25 May by the Criminal Court in the
capital, Nouakchott. They had admitted to being members of the Islamist armed
group Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In court, they denied
killing the French tourists, and their lawyers protested constantly that the
men had given statements under torture after they were arrested, in January
2008, and that these had been used as evidence against them during their
trial. For details of Amnesty
International's concerns about torture of alleged Islamists, see the report Mauritania:
torture at the heart of the State, AI Index AFR 38/009/2008. Amnesty
International met the three men several times, during two research missions
in Mauritania, while they were in custody. Each of them said they had been
tortured for several weeks, one of them saying he had been tortured, beaten
and humiliated every day for 18 days. Another said he had been tortured,
deprived of sleep and food for a month, and threatened with rape and
humiliation. The third one explained how he had been subjected to the
"jaguar" technique, in which his wrists and ankle were bound
together and he was hung by them from a bar. Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil
Liberties: 5 Status: Not Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/mauritania [accessed 5 February
2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] The judicial system
is heavily influenced by the government. Many decisions are shaped by Sharia (Islamic
law), especially in family and civil matters. Prison conditions are harsh,
and security forces suspected of human rights abuses operate with impunity.
There are reports that prisoners, particularly terrorism suspects, are
subject to torture by authorities. Between May and June 2008, a new prison
for suspected terrorists was built on a military base, and several inmates
staged a hunger strike on June 6 to protest conditions there. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT Torture and other
ill-treatment continued to be widely reported in detention centres, including
in Ksar and Tevragh-Zeina police stations and in Nouakchott women’s prison. A student detained
at Ksar police station following the February student demonstrations had his
hands and feet tied together with a rope, and was beaten and stamped on
during interrogation. Two women detained
at the women’s prison reported being severely beaten when they were arrested
in 2010, and during interrogation at a police station. No investigations
were opened into allegations of torture and ill-treatment in police custody
and during interrogation ENFORCED
DISAPPEARANCES The authorities
failed to disclose the whereabouts of 14 prisoners sentenced for
terrorism-related offences and abducted from the central prison in the
capital, Nouakchott, in May 2011. They included Mohamed Ould Chabarnou, Sidi
Ould Sidina, Maarouf Ould Heiba, Khadim Ould Semane, Mohamed Ould Abdou,
Abderrahmane Ould Areda and Mohamed Ould Chbih. The authorities maintained
that their transfer to a secret location was a temporary measure for security
reasons. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For more
articles:: Search Amnesty International’s
website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=mauritania+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 8 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61581.htm [accessed 5 February
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61581.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – Although the law
prohibits such practices there were credible reports that police routinely
beat and tortured suspects in custody, which resulted in at least one death
(see section 1.a). There were instances of torture in prisons. Alleged police
torture techniques included beating, hanging, burning with cigarettes,
electric shock, and cutting. According to reports, those who lacked money or
influential family or tribal ties were the most likely to be tortured. Prisoners released
under a May amnesty reported repeated beatings, in particular at the Ouad Naga and police school prisons (see section 1.d.).
Prisoners cited a March 15 beating when forces, under the command of
gendarmerie lieutenant H'Moudy Ould
Taya, attacked the group, beat them and stole their possessions and clothing. On September 29,
the Nouakchott Info, a local daily newspaper, reported the torture of several
Islamists including Ismael Issa, arrested by the
former government during the yea; Issa remained in
prison. The article included a graphic photo of Issa's
legs, which bore severe wounds reportedly inflicted by police during various
interrogations (see section 1.d.). All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Mauritania", http://gvnet.com/torture/Mauritania.htm, [accessed
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