Mauritania: «Nobody wants to have anything to do with us» : Arrests and collective expulsions of migrants denied entry into Europe / Amnesty International, 1 July 2008
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGAFR380012008&lang=e
"Since 2006, thousands of migrants, accused of setting out from Mauritania with the intention of entering the Canary Islands (Spain) irregularly, have been arrested, then forcibly returned to Mali or Senegal without any right of appeal to challenge the decision before a judicial authority. Many of them have been held for several days in a detention centre at Nouadhibou (in northern Mauritania), where some have been ill-treated by members of the Mauritanian security forces. Nationals of West African countries say they have been arbitrarily arrested in the street or at home and accused, apparently without any evidence, of intending to travel to Spain. Some of these people have been the victims of racketeers and many have been forcibly returned by the Mauritanian authorities to Mali or Senegal. These arrests, followed almost automatically by being returned to the border, are all the more arbitrary since it is not an offence under Mauritanian law to leave Mauritania irregularly."