Prime suspect in murder of French tourists flees Mauritania court

An Al-Qaeda suspect accused of last December's killing of four French tourists in Mauritania escaped from police in the capital Nouakchott , according to latest reports.

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 December 24 in a rare attack that sparked worries of rising terrorist violence in the 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, a lawyer Limam Cheikh told reporters.

Cheikh Liman is representing Abou Said, who had been previously convicted of belonging to a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and has been charged with being an accessory to the killing of the French tourists.

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 terrorist groupings active in neighbouring Algeria and Morocco may be extending their criminal 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 vacationers.

A fifth French tourist was seriously injured in the attack but survived as the sole witness to the crime.