(Paris) An important jihadist leader was captured on Sunday in Mali in the border area by French soldiers as they enter the final phase of their withdrawal, the French general staff announced on Wednesday.
Posted at 8:13 a.m.
“On the night of June 11 to 12, 2022, an operation by the Barkhane force […] allowed the capture of Oumeya Ould Albakaye, senior official of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS) ”, the Sahelian antenna of the global nebula, from the same source.
The jihadist, “a time tipped to succeed the former emir” Adnan Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui, neutralized by the French in August 2021, “had skills in terms of handling explosives”, commented to AFP a secure source.
Albakaye was the head of the EIGS for Gourma, in Mali, and for Oudalan, in the north of Burkina Faso, according to the staff.
“He organized several attacks against various military bases in Mali, including that of Gao. He was leading networks implementing improvised explosive devices,” he said.
A local elected official confirmed his capture “during a helicopter intervention in a camp” in the Tessit sector, on the Malian side of the so-called three-border area, on the borders of Burkina Faso and Niger.
“They took it after fighting in the area between EIGS and JNIM”, Arabic acronym for the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, he added under cover of anonymity for security reasons.
A resident of Tessit contacted by telephone also confirmed the capture with AFP.
The area of the three borders is one of the most active centers of polymorphic violence raging in the Sahel. It is a theater of operations for jihadist groups, various armed groups, the armies of the three border countries and the soldiers of the French anti-jihadist force Barkhane.
France is on the way to completing its military withdrawal from Mali after nine years of engagement, pushed towards the exit by the junta in power in Bamako since August 2020.
The deterioration of relations has worsened in recent months with the junta’s use of what it presents as Russian instructors, mercenaries from the Russian Wagner company with controversial actions in Africa and elsewhere according to France and its allies.
The French army on Monday handed over the keys to the Ménaka base in the same vast military region of Ménaka, and will have left Mali for good “at the end of the summer” with the transfer to the Malian forces (FAMa) of their main hold in Gao, according to the French general staff.
Massacres
Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop again told the UN on Monday that the soldiers were no longer welcome by categorically refusing that French planes continue to support the UN mission in Mali (Minusma) .
The French have in recent months announced that they have killed a number of ISGS executives in the border area, first and foremost its leader Al-Sahraoui in August.
On Monday, the UN envoy to Mali, El-Ghassim Wane, testified before the United Nations Security Council of a “deterioration” of the security situation “since the beginning of this year” in the area of the three borders.
The meager information coming from this immense remote and difficult to access area reports hundreds of civilians killed and thousands displaced in recent months in the regions of Ménaka and Gao further west. Fighting has pitted the EIGS there in recent weeks against a coalition of the Malian army and armed groups supported by Bamako.
Several massacres have been attributed to this same jihadist group over the past year without the organization still claiming responsibility for them.
The last major attack – unclaimed – occurred Sunday evening in Seytenga, Burkina Faso, killing 79 people according to a still provisional official report.
Before Seytenga, it was Tamalat (in Mali, around 100 deaths in March 2022), Ouatagouna (in Mali, around 50 deaths in August 2021), Tillia (in Niger, 141 deaths in March 2021)…
“Our border with Mali is now under the control of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara,” said Niger President Mohamed Bazoum in mid-May.
The EIGS group was born in 2015 from a dissidence of Abou Walid Sahraoui vis-à-vis the jihadist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to which he belonged. Disavowed by AQIM after having pledged allegiance to IS, her “katiba” was recognized by IS a year later.