A court charged two Mauritanians with joining al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to fight in Mali. One of the suspects, Brahim Ould Hmeida, is a brother of Abdallahi Ould Hmeida, a hostage-taker in the Id Amenas attack in Algeria. The other suspect, Mohamed Lemine Ould Cheikhani, had been arrested for terrorism in 2006 but was acquitted.