Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz

Aziz was born at Akjoujt and joined Morocco's Meknes Royal Military Academy in 1977. ¹ A career soldier and high-ranking officer, he was a leading figure in the August 2005 coup that ousted President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, and on 6 August 2008 he led another coup, which removed President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi; he then headed the High Council of State as Mauritania's ruler until April 2009. ¹

Aziz won the 2009 presidential election and took office on 5 August 2009. ¹ He chaired the African Union from January 2014 to January 2015. ¹ When Mohamed Ould Ghazouani took the oath on 1 August 2019, it was Mauritania's first peaceful transfer of power. ¹

In March 2021 a judge charged Aziz and ten people in his inner circle with corruption; in June 2021 he was transferred from house arrest to jail after refusing to co-operate with police, and in December 2021 he underwent heart surgery in Nouakchott's military hospital. ¹ On 4 December 2023 he was convicted of illicit enrichment and laundering and sentenced to five years' imprisonment; on 14 May 2025 an appeal court in Nouakchott raised the sentence to fifteen years. ¹

No article text in any language consulted says anything about Aziz's religion — his stated opposition to Islamic fundamentalism after the 2008 coup is political positioning — and Wikidata carries Sunni Islam only as a single value while the articles file him under Mauritanian Muslims, so the museum records his faith as unknown and preserves the Sunni reading in the data file. ^{1 2 3}

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