Whoops. “Suspect in murders of French flees Mauritania court,” by Noiselle Champagne for Reuters:
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, lawyers and officials said.
Sidi Ould Sidna asked police to leave him alone for a few minutes to pray, and took the opportunity to escape, judicial sources in Paris and in Mauritania’s intelligences service said.
Ould Sidna is accused of gunning down four French tourists during 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.
Defence lawyers said Ould Sidna, 20, gave police officers the slip shortly after a hearing before an examining magistrate at the main law courts in Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott.
“The hearing ended at around 1 p.m. We left the 5th chamber, where the hearing had taken place, and we walked the few steps to the criminal court,” said Ould Sidna’s lawyer, Souleimane Sy.
“Then Sidi Ould Sidna went on alone with a police officer. They went towards the law court’s police station. Ten minutes later the police officers came back, dumbfounded, saying he had escaped,” said Sy.
Security services mounted an operation in the area around the court house, but failed to find Ould Sidna.
“Some sources are suggesting he may even still be inside,” Souleimane said. […]
Ould Sidna and his co-accused are suspected of killing the French tourists on behalf of al Qaeda, whose global second-in-command called in September for Muslims to cleanse the Maghreb “of the children of France and Spain”.
“It’s flabbergasting,” said a senior official in the West African country’s administration.
Yes. It is.