Mauritania concluded its largest-ever trial, issuing guilty verdicts to 84 people and acquitting more than 100 others...

Mauritania concluded its largest-ever trial, issuing guilty verdicts to 84 people and acquitting more than 100 others including a former president accused of bankrolling three plots to overthrow President Maaouiya Ould Taya.
Four ringleaders of the plots starting with a bloody uprising in June 2003 and followed by back-to-back attempts in August and September of 2004 were sentenced to life in prison by the military and civilian jury presided by chief justice Mohamed El Hadi Mohamed.
Jail terms ranging from 15 years to 18 months were imposed against 80 other defendants, many of whom have been in prison since the June 7-9 coup attempt in 2003, that was foiled in a 36-hour gunbattle with loyalist soldiers at a military barracks near the capital, Nouakchott.
Death sentences had been recommended for 17 defendants including coup mastermind Saleh Ould Henenna, a former army major, and his associate, former captain Abderrahmane Ould Mini, alone among the 176 defendants who appeared in court to plead guilty to charges filed against them.
Life sentences were imposed in absentia on Mohamed Ould Salek and Mohamed Ould Cheikhna, the founder of the exiled band of renegade military officers known since June 2003 as Knights of Change. Former president Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla, ousted in 1984 by Ould Taya, was acquitted on charges he bankrolled the putsch attempts and spared a five-year jail term that had been recommended by prosecutors.