Ten Mauritanian anti-slavery advocates on Friday were handed their freedom in a partial appeal-court victory that left three of their fellow accused in jail, a judicial source said.
An appeals court in the northern town of Zouerate acquitted three of the people, while seven others were handed jail sentences that they have already served. Three more must still spend time behind bars.
“The court has corrected an error by qualifying the events as an offense and not a crime. That’s very positive,” one of the defense lawyers, Bah Ould Mbareck, told reporters.
“In the meantime, we’re continuing to believe that they’re all innocent,” Mbareck said.
On Wednesday, prosecutors had called for a 20-year sentence against the people, who were originally handed 15-year jail terms at their trial in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, in August.
The prosecutor accused all 13 of launching a “rebellion against the public authority and vandalism.”
The public prosecutor did not say whether a further appeal would be lodged against the appeal court’s decision.
Those who were charged previously claimed to have been tortured in custody, something the prosecution denied.
The 13 were initially convicted of using violence, attacking security forces, gathering while armed and membership of an unrecognized organization — the Abolitionist Movement.
All of them denied being involved in violence and asked to be acquitted.
Amnesty International welcomed their release and asked Mauritanian authorities to investigate the claims of torture and do more to tackle slavery.
Amnesty’s west Africa campaigner Kine Fatim Diop said in a statement the anti-slavery advocates “had been unfairly sentenced” for “peacefully expressing their opinions.”
Diop said their release was “a huge relief” for those “campaigning for an end to the brutal crackdown on human rights defenders in Mauritania.”
She said the fact that three remain in jail was a “distressing sign of the shrinking space” afforded to human rights advocates in Mauritania.
“It is even more appalling that the court’s ruling ignored the serious allegations of torture that were made by the defendants and that no investigation has yet been launched,” Diop said.
The government should “recognize the legitimacy” of those fighting to end “slavery and discrimination,” including the Abolitionist Movement, she said.
Balla Toure, vice-president of the movement, insisted that his group was “pacifist.”
“I am a facilitator of development and not a facilitator of destruction. I don’t destroy,” he said.
French lawyers for the activists lodged a complaint in Paris against unknown people for “torture and cruel treatment.”
They identified 20 high-level officials whom they accuse of being the “architects of torture in Mauritania” and asked for French authorities to arrest them if they set foot in France.
Officially, slavery was outlawed in Mauritania in 1981, but the west African country remains a bastion of the practice.
Modern-day slavery under a hereditary system of servitude forces members of the “slave” caste to work without pay as cattle herders and domestic servants, despite an official ban.
Many Mauritanians live below the poverty line, while there is a huge disparity between the Arabised moorish elites and the country’s black population.
Alongside this case, Mauritania has also come under the spotlight for human rights abuses in respect to a blogger on death row, originally accused of apostasy, but then a reduced charge of “infidel” behavior.
Cheikh Ould Mohamed Ould Mkheitir was sentenced to death in 2014 in the Muslim nation over an article he wrote, allegedly challenging decisions taken by Islam’s prophet, Mohammad, and his companions during wars in the seventh century.
Mkheitir’s article also attacked the mistreatment of the country’s black population, blasting “an iniquitous social order” with an underclass that was “marginalized and discriminated against from birth,” and to which he belongs.
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