Trial starts of 181 people accused of plotting against president

The mass trial of 181 people accused of plotting a series of attempts to overthrow Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya has opened at a remote military barracks in the desert. An IRIN correspondent present at the improvised courthouse in Ouad Naga, 50 km east of the capital Nouakchott, said security was high as the trial began on Sunday. Hundreds of soldiers and military policemen stood guard as defence lawyers and journalists packed into the court room, set up in a base of the paramilitary gendarmerie, where the accused are being held. Government prosecutors allege that the 170 military men and 11 civilians -- including former president Mohamed Kouna Ould Haidallah and two other opposition leaders -- were involved in three separate attempts to stage a coup aimed at ending Ould Taya's 20-year reign. The president is a former army colonel who seized power himself in a coup in 1984. Since then, he has ruled this desert nation, which straddles black and Arab Africa, with an iron hand. Ould Taya has angered many of Mauritania's staunchly Muslim 2.8 million people by establishing diplomatic ties with Israel and over the past two years has cracked down on Islamic fundamentalist groups in the country. Diplomats say the president has also alienated a large section of the armed forces by favouring his kinsmen from the northwest of Mauritania and excluding most southerners in the officer corps from top positions in the armed forces and government. Most of those facing trial are accused of backing an army uprising in June 2003. Two days of heavy fighting took place in Nouakchott before forces loyal to Ould Taya finally regained control of the capital. Several others are accused of joining the same group of conspirators in two subsequent coup plots which the government said it dismantled in August and September this year. Ould Taya has accused Burkina Faso and Libya of helping to plan and finance these rebellions. However, critics of the president say he is simply using the allegations of fresh coup plots supported by foreign powers as a pretext to clamp down on the opposition. Only one defendant appeared before the court on the opening day on the trial - Major Mohamed Ould Val, who was serving with a Nouakchott-based military regiment at the time of last year's military insurrection. He denied charges of being directly implicated in the coup attempt. Ould Val told the court he had warned his superiors about the imminent plot. He claimed that he was being punished because he was the only senior officer from his battalion who stayed at his post to fight the putschists. The others, he said, went into hiding. However, Ould Val did admit to being a friend of Major Saleh Ould Hanenna, a former army officer who was the alleged mastermind behind the series of attempts to overthrow the president. Ould Hanenna was arrested last month after being on the run for over a year. He is due to appear in court at a later date. The opening of the trial was delayed by several hours as lawyers wrangled over the presence of two military officials on the jury of the civilian court. The presiding judge rejected the defence's demand that the pair be disqualified from sitting. "This will be a parody of justice," defence lawyer Brahima Ould Ebetty told the Associated Press news agency. "I'm afraid for a just and equitable trial." The mass trial is expected to last several months. Lawyers said some of the senior military officers accused of masterminding the coup plots, could face the death penalty if convicted. Ould Haidallah, who served as Mauritania's military head of state from 1980 until his overthrow by Ould Taya in 1984, sought to regain power through the ballot box in last year's presidential election, in which he was officially declared runner-up. The former president, who briefly succeeded in uniting Mauritania's disparate opposition forces, was placed under house arrest three weeks ago and sent for trial along with the other alleged conspirators.