March 5, 2025
The founder and leader of the Patriotic Liberation Front (FPL) Mahmoud Sallah was arrested by soldiers from unit 87 of the Libyan National Army at his home in Qatrun, Libya on Sunday, February 21, 2024.
According to Premium Times, the FPL is a Nigerien-Toubou armed group operating near the Libyan border that Sallah founded in 2021.
The Toubou are an ethnic group of 300,000 people inhabiting northern Chad, southern Libya, northeastern Niger, and northwestern Sudan.
Archeological evidence indicates that the Toubou were among the first to settle in the Sahara.
The FPL is fighting for the restoration of former Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum after his overthrow by the Nigerien military junta led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani in July 2023.
Bazoum and his wife Hadiza are still being held in the Nigerien presidential palace.
In November 2024, the Nigerien junta revoked Sallah’s Nigerien citizenship along with seven members of the Bazoum administration for alleged terrorist bomb attacks.
The FPL claimed responsibility for disabling the 2,000-kilometer Niger-Benin oil pipeline in Niger’s southern Zinder region on June 14, 2024.
The FPL accused the Nigerian junta of pocketing some of the $400 million advance received by the government from China National Petroleum Corporation for future exported oil via the Port Sèmè-Kpodji offshore terminal of Benin.
The Nigerien junta could request the extradition of Sallah.
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