A 2005 military coup overthrew Mauritania's president while he was at a royal funeral
While attending a royal funeral in Saudi Arabia in 2005, Mauritania's long-time president was blindsided by a bloodless military coup that ended his twenty-one-year grip on power.
President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was in Riyadh for the funeral of King Fahd on August 3, 2005, when high-ranking military officers seized the capital of Nouakchott. Led by the Military Council for Justice and Democracy, the coup leaders cited the 'totalitarian practices' of the regime as their motivation for the takeover.
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