By Abdou Cisse
APA-Nouakchott (Mauritania) The fugitives who escaped after a jailbreak in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott were linked to the sub-regional branch of al-Qaeda.
Since Sunday night, Mauritanian security forces have been on the trail of four jihadists. Saleck Ould Cheikh, Mohamed Ould Chebih, Aboubacar Essedick Abdel Kérim, and Mohamed Mahmoud Yeslim escaped from
Nouakchott prison after a gun battle with National Guard personnel in charge of security at the central civilian prison in the capital where the four men were being held.
According to the Mauritanian Interior Ministry, two prison guards were killed and two others wounded in the skirmish.
This is not the first escape from jail by Saleck Ould Cheikh.
On December 31, 2015, the jihadist, a supporter of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had managed to deceive the guards to leave the prison.
He then crossed the border into Senegal before being arrested in Guinea Conakry on January 19, 2016.
He was repatriated and his conditions of imprisonment had, officially, hardened.
Saleck Ould Cheikh was initially detained for taking part in a 2011 plot to attack former president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who leaves office in 2019. That same year, he was tried and sentenced to death.
Mohamed Ould Chebih had been imprisoned since 2005 for his involvement in a jihadist attack on a Mauritanian army unit in Lemgheity in the far north of the country. This armed operation was the first of its
kind carried out outside the Algerian borders by the former Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which later became AQIM. Seventeen Mauritanian soldiers lost their lives.
The other two escapees, Aboubacar Assedik Abdel Kerim and Mohamed Mahmoud Yeslim, had been imprisoned in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
They were serving sentences of ten years for the former and seven years for the latter as a result of terrorist crimes.
AC/los/fss/as/APA