Mauritanian opposition leaders and civil society organizations are condemning the arrest of a former senator turned anti-corruption activist and calling for his immediate release.
Mohamed Ould Ghadda, President of the Organization for Inclusive Transparency (OTI), was arrested at his home just before midnight last Saturday, after announcing that he had evidence of bribery in a case prosecutors had dismissed.
“We believe that this arrest cannot be disassociated from a worrying context marked by the surveillance of whistleblowers and the suppression of free voices while the genuinely corrupt escape accountability and sensitive files are hastily dismissed without being thoroughly investigated,” five opposition lawmakers said in a joint statement, calling for Ould Ghadda’immediate and unconditional release.
The arrest was also denounced by Hamadi Ould Sid'El Moctar, president of the main opposition party, the National Rally for Reform and Development, who said: “It is regrettable that the handling of corruption cases leads to the imprisonment of a former senator who announced his readiness to provide documents proving real corruption.”
Ould Ghadda ‘s arrest came just hours after he publicly criticized a decision by the Nouakchott West Prosecutor’s Office to dismiss a corruption case linked to the construction of a forensics laboratory for Mauritanian police. In an online video, he said he would present evidence of bribery in the project on Monday.
OCCRP contacted both the Ministry of the Interior and the government spokesman, asking for clarification regarding the justification for Ould Ghadda’s arrest, but received no response by the time of publication.
Speaking with OCCRP after visiting Ould Ghadda in prison on Thursday, Secretary General of OTI Mustapha Sidati said that Ould Ghadda is being held at the police cybercrime unit in the capital, Nouakchott, and that no formal charges had been filed nearly a week after his arrest.
“There is now strong rhetoric against corruption coming from the President of the Republic. It is very troubling that they would arrest the president of the only national association that is genuinely fighting corruption in the country,” Sidati said.
The arrest marks the activist's third time in prison. In 2017, he was detained for almost a year after criticizing the dissolution of Mauritania’s Senate. In 2024, he was held for almost four months in custody after OTI exposed inflated costs in the Aftout Ech-Chargui water supply project in the south of the country.
While in detention this time, Ould Ghadda was acquitted of defamation charges linked to OTI’s investigation of that project, which was largely financed by a 22.3 million euro ($25.9 million) loan from the French Development Agency.
The investigation found that a consortium of three companies – including BIS-TP5, owned by Mauritanian businessman Mohamed Zine El Abidine – largely failed to deliver infrastructure meant to supply drinking water to hundreds of villages. OTI concluded that water was “unavailable at the vast majority of public taps” due to cost-cutting and substandard work that did not meet specifications, with sections of the project left unfinished.
BIS-TP5 sued Ould Ghadda for defamation and spreading false information. In acquitting him, the Nouakchott West state court cited an independent judicial expert assessment released in November and seen by OCCRP that substantiated his claims.
Ould Ghadda is now being held in prison after criticizing the Nouakchott West Prosecutor’s Office for closing an investigation into his organization’s allegations that three Mauritanian officials pocketed bribes in a multi-million euro project for the construction of a police forensics laboratory.
Prosecutors closed the case last week, saying that “all stipulated contractual obligations have been fulfilled properly” and that there had been no harm to the public interest. Ould Ghadda subsequently announced that he would provide further evidence of corruption in the case.
