Mauritania jails gendarme for al-Qaeda ties

 

Mauritania jails gendarme for al-Qaeda ties By Jemal Oumar in Nouakchott for Magharebia - 17/05/2013

http://magharebia.com/en_GB/articles/awi/features/2013/05/17/feature-01

 

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A Nouakchott criminal court on Tuesday (May 14th) sentenced a gendarme convicted of spying for al-Qaeda to 10 years of hard labour.

 

Abdallahi Ould Mohamed Ghailani, who served as a guard at the remote Salah Eddine prison, facilitated communication between salafist inmates and terrorists outside the jail.

 

The case was reportedly the first time a member of the Mauritanian security services was tried and convicted for links to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

 

Meanwhile, four students arrested last January in the University of Islamic Sciences in al-Ayoun, 600km southeast of Nouakchott, were sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of 5 million ouguiyas for trying to form a recruiting cell to send fighters to Mali.

 

"These groups, some of whom have already been sentenced to death, still cling to their jihadist convictions, although they are isolated from the world in a remote area," Sahel terrorism analyst Riadh Ould Ahmed al-Hadi told Magharebia. "They are desperate to exploit anyone, including even the soldiers."

 

Ould Ahmed al-Hadi added, "All this insistence and commitment to jihadist salafist ideology refutes what those people say about their ideological revisions or their possible repentance. It also shows that what they said in dialogue with scholars two years ago about giving up their extremist ideology is not true."

 

"Military personnel must be more immune in terms of ideology and doctrine in the face of radical ideology influence," he said.

 

The families of salafist prisoners have staged several protests over the last two years opposite the justice ministry and parliament in Nouakchott.

They wanted to know where the government had moved their loved ones.

 

The authorities have justified their decision to move the inmates to a site outside the city.

 

"Those prisoners still pose a threat to security because their detention conditions in the capital have enabled them to establish external links with terrorist groups, which means that they haven't given up on their jihadist ideology," President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz said

 

In sentencing the gendarme, the court revealed that the he was involved in "co-operating with al-Qaeda prisoners, swore allegiance to them and carried messages from them to their families that enabled them to know for the first time that they are imprisoned at a base located within the closed military zone in northern Mauritania."

 

Al-Qaeda oftentimes sought to recruit agents from the Mauritanian army, but always failed in the past, according to journalist Mohamed Salem Ould al-Sheikh.

 

"In my opinion, attempts to recruit Mauritanian national army elements are scattered and are done by terrorist and jihadist groups to have access to the Mauritanian army's plans to combat these groups, given that the Mauritanian army had direct confrontations with them two years ago," he added.

 

Prosecutors on Tuesday also demanded a ten-year jail term for a Canadian convicted of attempting to join an al-Qaeda training camp in neighbouring Mali, a judicial source told AFP.

 

Aaron Yoon is serving two years in Nouakchott after being convicted last year, but prosecutors have appealed for a longer sentence.

 

He was arrested in December 2011 when he tried to visit AQIM camps in Mali, according to the indictment against him. The public prosecutor also said that he was involved in attempts to recruit Mauritanian young people to work for al-Qaeda.

 

The court is expected to rule on the case next month.

 

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