Mauretania: Supreme Court debates on death sentence against blogger

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has sent an appeal to the Mauritanian Supreme Court, asking the judges to accept the apology of the blogger Mohamed Cheikh Ould M’Kheitir – who is facing the death penalty for alleged apostasy – and to revoke the death sentence. “Africa’s Raif Badawi must not die just because he criticized discrimination and social injustice in his country,” said Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Africa-expert, in Göttingen on Tuesday.

Today, the Supreme Court will debate on the death sentence against the blogger, which had been confirmed by an appeals court in December 2014, despite the fact that the defendant had apologized several times. Article 306 of the Criminal Code allows the court to accept the apology and to revoke the death sentence. The 34-year-old was accused of apostasy after he had posted a blog-entry criticizing the discriminatory caste system and the way religion is used as a basis to exclude members of minority groups. “As M’Kheitir is facing the death penalty, his case is even more absurd than the suffering of the Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to lashings,” Delius stated.

Mauritania is eagerly awaiting a decision of the court, as nobody has been executed based on charges of apostasy since the state became independent in 1960 – and the last time the death penalty was carried out was in 1987. Leading Human Rights Organizations in Mauritania, human rights activists from all over the world, as well as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had demanded the blogger to be acquitted. The Italian city of Naples had even appointed him an Honorary Citizen as an attempt to draw attention to his tragic fate and to save his life.

The blogger had been arrested on January 2, 2014, after publishing a Facebook-post under the title “Religion, Religiosity and the Blacksmiths” in which he criticized the exclusion of the caste of the Blacksmiths and the strict caste system in Mauritania. M’Kheitir – who belongs to the oppressed caste of the Blacksmiths – had emphasized that discrimination is not God-given, but is caused by human actions. Religion should not be misused to justify discrimination. In the trial, the blogger stressed that he had not wanted to defame the Prophet Mohamed, but only to draw attention to the problematic situation.

The parents of the imprisoned blogger had fled to France in December 2016, where they applied for political asylum as they are threatened by radical Islamists in Mauritania.

Header Photo: STP