The trial of Mohamed Abdel Aziz, former President of the Republic, before the court in charge of the fight against corruption, approaches a decisive turn with the start of the debates on the merits of the case, on the occasion of the hearings on Thursday April 6 and Monday April 10.
These were marked by the parade at the bar of witnesses for the prosecution, with crisp revelations, but also the criticisms of the defense lawyers of the former head of state, in relation to the obstacles erected in relation to the exercise of cross-examination, necessary for the balance between the parties to the trial.
Commenting on the declarations of the first prosecution testimonies, Mr. Lô Gourmo, lawyer for the State of Mauritania, civil party in the case, considers that “the system of siphoning off the property of the people and their resources during the reign of Mohamed Abdel Aziz begins to come to light. Millions and millions of dollars were at the center of innumerable transactions in which the former President of the Republic, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, delivered himself without any restraint, sometimes directly, by himself, in cash. This money which flowed freely, in these astronomical quantities, was very often denominated in foreign currencies. A witness reveals how Ould Abdel Aziz entrusted him with $1 million and the dubious commercial transactions that were behind it.
Even more, 7 billion old ouguiyas were handed over to him by the ex-president”. “Key and emblematic” testimonies whose depositions lead to a forest of questions about the origin of all this fortune.
Diametrically opposed echoes on the defense side, with Maître Clédor Cyré, who speaks of “curious witnesses, answering questions from the court, the prosecution and the civil party, refusing to provide answers to the cross-examination of the lawyers of the defense.
Faced with this situation, it was expected that the court would take up the questions of the defense lawyers on its own, insofar as they are witnesses heard under oath. Which means they didn’t come to the stand to refuse to answer questions that might confuse or discredit them” but rather to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
This episode gives the trial “the form of a judicial farce, because a witness who appears answers the questions of the one who summons him, but also the cross-examination of the opposing party.
Testimony only makes sense if it is the subject of an adversarial debate, but that is not the case in this trial. In the same way, the documents that the prosecution would like to use must be the subject of a contradictory debate. The violation of all these rules takes us away from the conditions of a fair trial, ”deplores Maître Ly.
AS