between the two of them. The Complainant himself stated in his memo to the Court of Appeal of Nouakchott that his family is well-known for its good reputation and generosity. 12. The documents from the communication file also show that the Complainant had neither raised these matters before the District Court of Boutilimitt, nor before the Court of Rosso, or before the Court of Appeal. 13. The claimant has come up before the [African] Commission with new arguments that he did not advance before the courts in Mauritania in the process of his case. Consequently, by bringing new elements which are neither raised nor disputed before national courts he wanted to use this Commission as a court of first instance. In my view, this is another reason for declaring this communication inadmissible. 14. The inability of the Secretariat of the [African] Commission to work in Arabic whereas the original documents of the communication file are in this language, do inhibited the Commissioners ability to have first hand information. This made the [African] Commission to act only on the translated summary of part of the documents of the communication, which in my view, was not built on facts but on the mere allegations of the Complainant. Allegations, which were neither raised before national courts nor well substantiated before the [African] Commission. 15. The [African] Commission in acting upon the assumption that those allegations are facts, wrongly decided that the Islamic Republic of Mauritania has violated Article 14 of the African Charter. 16. The date of claim of donation (by opponent to the Complainant) goes back to 1959, according to Complainant, or to 1975 when the Complainant claims that the forceful eviction from disputed land took place. 17. One must note that the practice of slavery was legal in 1959 and 1975. Slavery was banned by the Mauritanian authorities in 1980. The recipient could therefore have easily based his claim of property over the disputed land on slavery. However, he did not do that. Instead, he claimed that the land was donated to him because the good relationship he had with the mother of the Complainant. 18. The events in question took place by any way before 1986 when Mauritania became a party to the African Charter; the admissibility of such a communication raises the question of the principle of retroactivity of laws which was not discussed by the [African] Commission in this very case. 19. The erection of building permissions No. 453 dated 24th November 1972, and No. 66 of 24th April 1971, (and not certificate of occupancy as mentioned in para. 46 and 50 of the [African] Commission[’s] ruling) both discussed by courts and ruled over that the later does not relate to the same plot of land. 20. I do agree with the [African] Commission’s conclusion that there is no evidence brought before the [African] Commission that the witnesses retracted from their statements made before the Cadi in support of donation as stated in the last part of paragraph 53 the decision. This part of the abovementioned mentioned paragraph negates the Complainant’s allegations as stated in paragraph 49 of the same document, and contradicts the final findings of the [African] Commission. 21. Para. 51 of the decision of the [African] Commission states that the plaintiffs (complainant) requested an investigation to prove as a result, the pertinence of the said violations of Article 14 of the African Charter. This paragraph does not reflect the accuracy that the Complainant claimed the violation of Article 14 of the African Charter. The lengthy discussions by commissioners, on whether the [African] Commission could invoke Article 14 of the African Charter that was not mentioned by the Complainant prove this. Moreover, paragraph 3 and 43 of the decision did not mention Article 14 of the African Charter. 22. The Mauritanian courts cannot restrain the right or freedom of the claimant’s mother to dispose part of her property by way of donation to a member of her family without a legal basis, neither do they have the right to compel the claimant’s mother to explain the reasons why she donated such property to one of her family members, while she is sane, mature and not restrained from disposing her property by a court order. 23. Had the Mauritanian courts prevented the [Complainant’s] mother from disposing of part of her property by donating it to a relative and deprived her son of that portion of property, they would have violated Article 14 of the African Charter, which related to the right to property and also embodies the rights to freely dispose of one’s property.