Interior Minister Ahmedou Ould Abdalla said Tuesday that "foreign hands" were plotting against the state through spurring turbulence post the presidential elections on Saturday. During a press conference at the ministrys headquarters, he said "there is a foreign hand behind these events.” "We have arrested a hundred foreigners whose presence cannot be explained in the context of the election in a country that is not their own," the minister noted. Mauritanias electoral commission declared last week that government-backed candidate Mohamed Ould Ghazouani had won the presidency with 52 percent of the vote. However, this result was nixed by the opposition candidates. Biram Dah Abeid came second with 18.58 percent, while Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who is backed by Mauritanias biggest Islamist party, was third with 17.85 percent. Boubacar said on Wednesday he had filed an appeal with the Constitutional Council a day earlier, according to Reuters. Opposition candidates had previously voiced concern about ballot papers being printed by a private company, said to be pro-Ghazouani. Boubacar has also complained about a lack of international observers. The African Union, which promotes democracy, human rights, and development in the continent, has said it was satisfied with the electoral process. The peaceful election was the first in Mauritanias history to choose a successor to a democratically elected president, knowing that the sparsely populated Saharan nation won independence from France in 1960.