Police beat teenager to death, rights group says

Mauritanian police beat to death a teenage boy who was stopped for an identity check last weekend and tortured a pregnant woman so badly that she aborted, a Senegal-based human rights group reported on Friday. The organisation, RADDHO, said it was not clear whether the two victims were targetted for political reasons, but it condemned what it described as "the recurrence of acts of torture in Mauritania." The Islamic West African country is nominally a multi-party democracy. However, President Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya has ruled the country with an iron hand since coming to power in a 1984 coup. A military rebellion on June 8 was put down after heavy fighting in the capital Nouakchott and a government crackdown on Islamic militants, launched before the coup attempt, has continued since then with renewed vigour. According to RADDHO, an Africa-wide rights advocacy group, Amadou Kane, a 17-year-old boy, was beaten to death by a police patrol in Nouakchott on Sunday night after being stopped for an identity check. RADDHO said his parents were subsequently pressured by the public prosecutor's office not to insist on an autopsy. The youg man was buried this week. The organisation also reported that a pregnant woman, Kadijetou Mint Mohamed Abdallahi, was tortured by the police to the point where she aborted her two-mmonth-old foetus. It is not clear why Abdallahi was in police custody. RADDHO's executive secretary, Alioune Tine, told IRIN that his organisation had urged President Taya to investigate these incidents and punish those responsible. Taya is standing for a fresh seven-year term of office in presidential elections due on November 7.