Mauritania to free Canadian terror suspect after 18-month detention
A Mauritanian official says a 24-year-old Canadian man who was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of having ties to al-Qaida’s North African branch will be freed because he has already served his time.
Prosecutor Ahmed Ould Abdalla told The Associated Press late Sunday the court decided to release Aaron Yoon because he had already been imprisoned for the duration of his sentence.
He was first arrested in December of 2011.
Yoon said he travelled to Mauritania to study the Qur’an.
He reportedly travelled to the region with two other Canadians, who were later implicated in a terror attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in southeastern Algeria earlier this year, which ended with the deaths of 37 hostages and 29 terrorists.
Yoon is accused of travelling to Morocco with Ali Medlej and Xris Katsiroubas, all of whom went to the same high school in London, Ont.
The RCMP confirmed that Medlej and Katsiroubas were among the dead terrorists found in the Algerian plant.
Yoon has said that he didn’t know how Medlej and Katsiroubas had become linked with militants.
He said he heard about the gas plant attack while in prison, and that it was “news” to him at that point.
Last month, Amnesty International said it supported claims by Yoon that he had been tortured while behind bars in Mauritania.