The funeral of a gendarme who was killed during an operation to apprehend four terrorists who escaped from prison was attended by hundreds of Mauritanian soldiers and civilians on Sunday, Mar. 12 in Nouakchott.
According to an AFP journalist, relatives, a number of ministers, the heads of the security services, and the rest of the audience offered the funeral prayer in front of Gendarmerie Mustafa Ould Khudair Ould Obeid’s coffin.
In the Ibn Abbas Mosque, which is close to the prison from which the terrorists escaped a week ago, the coffin was draped in the national flag.
The gendarme was killed on Friday night, March 10, in the Adrar region (north), hundreds of miles away from Nouakchott, during a confrontation with the four fugitives.
Salek Ould Cheikh, who was on death row, was among the three fugitives who were killed, according to Nigerien authorities on Saturday (Mar. 11), while the fourth was captured.
Since 1987, the death penalty has not been used in Mauritania, despite the fact that it has not been abolished.
In the course of the terrorists’ breakout from the Nouakchott prison, two members of the National Guard were killed.
In connection with the assassination attempt on the then-president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and the attack on the French embassy, Ould Cheikh was given the death penalty in 2011.
Salek Ould Cheikh previously broke out of jail in December 2015, was apprehended in Guinea-Bissau, and then was sent back to Mauritania three weeks later.