A member of an extremist group wanted in the fatal carjacking of an American official in Niger more than a decade ago has been arrested by French soldiers in northern Mali, prosecutors said, reports The Washington Post.
The suspect, known as Cheibani Ould Hama, was due to be transferred to the capital, Bamako, on Thursday afternoon, chief prosecutor Daniel Tessougue said.
“He was arrested with three other people by the French army,” Tessougue said. “He will be handed over to Malian authorities at a gendarmerie camp in Bamako.” French forces, he said, did not offer additional details.
Experts say Cheibani, a Malian national, was a low-ranking member of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Officials in neighboring Niger have said he was among 22 prisoners who escaped during a June attack on the central prison in Niamey, the capital. The attack was carried out by suspected militants from the Nigeria-based Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.
In March, Cheibani was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the killing of four tourists from Saudi Arabia in 2009.
But U.S. authorities were on the hunt for Cheibani in connection with the shooting death of William Bultemeier, a Department of Defense attache, in 2000.
In September, officials in federal court in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment against Cheibani, whose real name is Alhassane Ould Mohamed, for allegedly murdering an internationally protected person.
The attack occurred in Niamey on Dec. 22, 2000, just before Bultemeier was to return home to North Carolina. He had gone out to dinner at a restaurant called La Cloche with Marine Staff Sgt. Christopher McNeely and other embassy employees. Bultemeier was driving a Toyota Land Cruiser with diplomatic license plates.
As Bultemeier left the restaurant shortly after midnight, he was accosted by Cheibani and an unidentified man armed with a pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle, the indictment said.
Cheibani allegedly demanded the keys to the SUV before shooting Bultemeier in the chest with the pistol. When McNeely tried to intervene, the second man used the AK-47 to shoot him and Bultemeier, the indictment says.
Read more of this AP report published by The Washington Post.