Nouakchott / Mohamed El Bekkay / Anadolu

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani issued a pardon for opposition MPs Gamo Aichour and Mariam Cheikh, thereby dropping the remainder of their prison sentences.

The Mauritanian presidency said in a statement on Thursday evening that El Ghazouani granted a pardon for Aichour and Cheikh, which includes dropping the remaining prison sentence and exempting them from fines and legal costs incurred in the case.

This presidential decision comes one day after the Court of Appeal in the capital Nouakchott upheld a ruling stripping the two MPs of their political and civil rights for five years, while reducing their initial prison sentence from four years to two.

The criminal chamber of the Western Nouakchott Regional Court had ruled in May last year to convict the two MPs and sentence them to four years in prison, confiscate their mobile phones, and close their accounts on social media platforms, considering them 'instruments of the crime'.

This came days after the public prosecutor referred the two MPs to prison, filing charges that included 'deliberately offending national symbols via digital media, and publishing racist statements aimed at harming civil peace and social cohesion'.

The charges also included 'threats, slander, incitement to gather to disrupt public order, and incitement to violence'.

Aichour and Cheikh are activists in the human rights 'Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement' (IRA), led by opposition figure Biram Dah Abeid, and they entered parliament by running on the lists of the nationalist-oriented 'Al Sawab' party.