Mauritania

New York, August 24, 2009--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Mauritanian court's decision to sentence an online editor to six months in prison.

New York, March 18, 2009--The military junta in Mauritania must immediately halt its increasing persecution of critical journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

New York, August 8, 2008--The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the new government in Mauritania to respect press freedom after at least one journalist complained of being harassed.

Attacks and developments throughout the region

New York, March 16, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that Mauritanian authorities detained a journalist for reporting on the illegal slave trade.

According to press reports and a Mauritanian source, police detained freelance journalist Mohamed Ould Lamine Mahmoudi on Sunday, March 13, after he interviewed a woman in the southern town Mederdra who claimed that she was kept as a slave by a family in another small Mauritanian town.

MARCH 13, 2005
Posted: March 17, 2005

Mohamed Ould Lamine Mahmoudi, freelance
IMPRISONED
According to press reports and a Mauritanian source, police detained freelance journalist Mahmoudi after he interviewed a woman in the southern town Mederdra who claimed that she was kept as a slave by a family in another small Mauritanian town.

In 2003, Mauritania's press remained subject to the whims of the Interior Ministry, which continued to use the country's broadly defined, restrictive press law to stifle independent reporting. For years, Article 11 of the law has been the state's strongest weapon against the press. The article grants the Interior Ministry the power to suspend any newspaper that, among other things, "harms general interests" or "touches upon Islamic principles." Journalists complain that when a publication is banned, specific reasons are rarely provided.