NOUAKCHOTT, Senegal (AFP) – A senior
operative in an Al Qaeda-linked group in
war-torn northern Mali has surrendered
to Mauritania, a security source told AFP
on Monday.
Ansar Dine spokesman Senda Ould
Boumama "went to the Mauritanian
armed forces on the border", near the
southeastern town of Bassiknou, on
Saturday evening, the source said
without giving further details.
According to Mauritania's independent
ANI news agency, Ould Boumama was
transferred during the weekend to the
capital Nouakchott, where he is being
interrogated by police.
He first expressed a desire to surrender
and be extradited to face trial in
Mauritania, his home country, in a
telephone call on April 17 to ANI, which
is frequently used by Al Qaeda's north
Africa chapter to post messages.
Ould Boumama claimed to have been the
target of an assassination attempt,
although he did not reveal the origin.
The surrender will be seen as a further
blow to Ansar Dine four months after
France led a military operation to oust
the organisation and other Islamist
militias from the towns they had
occupied across northern Mali last year.
The militants and Tuareg rebels took
northern Mali in the wake of a military
coup in the capital Bamako last year that
left Mali, formerly once of the region's
most stable countries, in disarray.
Ansar Dine later implemented a brutal
interpretation of Islamic sharia law on
the people of the north, carrying out
amputations and public executions.
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