Refworld Case Law Collection Survey
Niger: Security Forces Repel Islamist Prison Attack
| Publisher | Jamestown Foundation |
| Author | Alexander Sehmer |
| Publication Date | 28 October 2016 |
| Citation / Document Symbol | Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 21 |
| Cite as | Jamestown Foundation, Niger: Security Forces Repel Islamist Prison Attack, 28 October 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 21, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/582b1aba4.html [accessed 12 January 2017] |
| Disclaimer | This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. |
Link to original story on Jamestown website
Gunmen mounted a failed attacked on a high-security prison in Niger on October 17, in an apparent attempt to free Islamist fighters. Despite a sustained gun battle, the attack was repulsed, with one attacker killed. The man was found wearing a suicide belt he had been unable to detonate, according to Mohamed Bazoum, the interior minister (Twitter, October 17). No prisoners appear to have escaped during the attack (Afrika News, October 17).
In early reports, an unnamed official attributed the attempted prison break to the Mali-based Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), which split from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in 2011 (Tamtam, October 17). Mali-based militants have targeted the prison before, helping to free 22 inmates, including convicted terrorists, in an attack in 2013 (al-Jazeera, June 23, 2013). It also follows just days after an American aid worker was abducted in Abalak. The attackers killed the aid worker's bodyguard, apparently intending to sell the aid worker to militants across the border in Mali (eNCA, October 16).
Suggestions also have been made that the prison attack was the work of Boko Haram. The prison at Koutoukale, about 30 miles northeast of Niamey, is overfull with more than 500 inmates, many of them Boko Haram members. Most of them were transferred recently from the Diffa region, close to the border with Chad and northeastern Nigeria (Tamtam, October 17).
Diffa has seen a months-long joint military campaign waged by Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria in a push to mop up Boko Haram fighters who have infiltrated the region. Attacks in Diffa began in February 2015, but have escalated this year as Boko Haram operations in Chad and Cameroon have declined and potentially at the behest of Islamic State (see Terrorism Monitor, August 19). In recent months, Boko Haram fighters destroyed a medical facility in Yebi and raided another in Ngarwa (CAJ News, May 26).
The Diffa campaign has been slow, and it has struggled with poor coordination between the regional allies. More recently, however, it has seen some relative success, with scores of militants killed and others sent to join the overcrowded inmates in Koutoukale (eNCA, October 1). This success, however, is limited to the targeting of Boko Haram fighters; hundreds of thousands of people – more than 302,000 according to estimates from the UN refugee agency – remain displaced in the region as a result of the conflict, many of them Nigerians who have fled across the border to escape the militant group.
