Yet Another al-Qaeda Suspect “Escapes” from Prison
Yup, time and time again we see terrorists “escaping” from prison. And, it almost always boils down to “moderate” Muslim prison officials and guards sympathetic to the “misunderstanders” of Islam.
Suspect in murders of French flees Mauritania court
Wed 2 Apr 2008
NOUAKCHOTT, April 2 (Reuters) – An al Qaeda suspect accused of the Christmas Eve killing of four French tourists in Mauritania escaped from police in the West African country on Wednesday, a lawyer for one of his co-accused said.
The man was accused of gunning down four French tourists as they enjoyed a family picnic by the side of a road in southern Mauritania last Dec. 24 in a rare attack that sparked worries of rising militant Islamist violence in the usually sleepy country.
“Sidi Ould Sidna escaped from the police station at the court house in Nouakchott this morning, when he was due to appear before the examining magistrate,” lawyer Limam Cheikh told Reuters.
Cheikh is representing Abou Said, who had been previously convicted of belonging to a “terrorist group” and has been charged with being an accessory to the killing of the French.
Police officials were unavailable for immediate comment.
France’s ambassador in Mauritania, Michel Vandepoorter, confirmed that Ould Sidna had escaped, but gave no more details.
The tourists’ killing shocked the former French colony spanning Arab and black Africa, stoking fears that Islamist militants active in neighbouring Algeria and Morocco may be extending activities further south.
Ould Sidna was one of five suspects arrested in the tiny nation of Guinea-Bissau, further down Africa’s Atlantic coast, and subsequently extradited to Mauritania in connection with the deaths of the French.
A fifth French tourist was seriously injured in the attack but survived as the sole witness to the crime.
The Dakar Rally, which was due to pass through Mauritania, was entirely cancelled for the first time within days of the attack after al Qaeda’s North African wing branded the event neo-colonialist and accused Mauritania of colluding with “crusaders, apostates and infidels”. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com) (Reporting by Noiselle Champagne; writing by Alistair Thomson; editing by Daniel Flynn)
