A Mauritanian national was indicted in New York on Saturday for his role in 2015 attacks in Mali targeting Westerners that left more than two dozen people dead, a Justice Department statement said.
Fawaz Ould Ahmed, a Mauritanian Islamist also known as “Ibrahim 10,” is accused of having committed the March 2015 attack on the La Terrasse bar and restaurant, in which five people died.
He is also accused of masterminding attacks on the Hotel Byblos in Sevare in August and the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako in November that left 13 and 20 people dead respectively.
The shocking attacks were among the first to explicitly target bars and restaurants popular with foreigners in Mali, which has been gripped by a brutal jihadist insurgency since 2012.
Among the victims were Europeans, United Nations workers and an American international development worker, Anita Ashok Datar.
Ould Ahmed was charged in the United States with multiple terrorism offenses, the Justice Department said.
The six-count indictment includes charges for the murder of Datar, support for a terrorist organization — Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Al-Murabitoun — and illegal use of explosives.
The now 44-year-old and two other jihadists involved in the attacks were sentenced to death by a Malian court in 2020.
During the trial, Ould Ahmed said he had carried out the attack on La Terrasse in revenge for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine.
US agents took custody of Ould Ahmed and brought him on Friday from Mali to New York, where he has been jailed pending trial.
“Today, we have made clear that the United States is steadfast in our commitment to bring to justice those who commit barbaric acts of terrorism targeting innocent victims,” said US Attorney Breon Peace, in the statement.
Born in Nouakchott in the late 1970s, Ould Ahmed was radicalized after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, allegedly becoming lieutenant to the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.