defence lawyers in the trial of 195 people accused of plotting...

defence lawyers in the trial of 195 people accused of plotting foiled coups in Mauritania have asked the court to apply Islam's Sharia law to avoid death sentences for 17 of the suspects. Mohamed Ould Ahmed Miska, speaking for the defence team, told the court that the death sentences sought by the state prosecutor were out of line with Sharia in the mainly Muslim northwest African country. Alleged coup mastermind Saleh Ould Henenna and 194 others were standing trial on charges of trying to overthrow the government in June 2003 and two further alleged bids in August and September 2004. Miska made a distinction in a plea which ran late into the night between a "rebel" movement as understood in Mauritanian law and a "seditious" one, where he argued that the Sunni theological code predominant in several north African countries applied. The case of former army major Ould Henenna, he said, "depends exclusively on Sharia because it is not covered in the penal code", adding that the armed movement known as Cavaliers for Change to which many of the defendants belonged to was a seditious one. 
"The texts of Islamic law stipulate that a prisoner from a seditious movement may not be killed, and for this reason, the prosecutor is in breach of Sharia," the lawyer said. Sharia had not been strictly applied in Mauritania since 1985 but remains the basis of most national legislation. On December 6, the prosecutor sought capital punishment for Ould Henenna, the suspected instigator of the 2003 attempted coup, army Captain Abderrahmane Ould Mini, Mohamed Ould Cheikhna, the head of Cavaliers for Change, an armed insurgency created abroad by renegade military men, and eight other people, on trial in absentia.