A Mauritanian court on Sunday freed a Canadian jailed for attempting to join an al-Qaida training camp in neighboring Mali, a judicial source said.

Aaron Yoon was serving two years in Nouakchott after being convicted in July last year when he was 24, but his sentence was reduced in an appeal brought by the prosecution who were asking for the term to be extended to 10 years, the source said.

Families separated for almost four decades by the conflict in Western Sahara will be reunited, often for the first time, by the expansion of a U.N. program for refugees living in camps near Tindouf, Algeria.

An agreement reached in Geneva between Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Western Sahara guerilla group the Polisario Front will initiate a new flight schedule to ferry refugees to their families and vice versa for 2014.

An al-Qaida suspect who was held at the U.S. prison at Bagram in Afghanistan was returned to Mauritania last week and not two prisoners from Guantanamo, a local security official said Sunday.

The head of a prisoners' rights group had said that two Mauritanians who had been held for several years at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba had been flown to Nouakchott on Friday after being cleared of suspected terror-related activities.

A senior operative in an al-Qaida-linked group in war-torn northern Mali has surrendered to Mauritania, a security source told Agence France Presse on Monday.

Ansar Dine spokesman Senda Ould Boumama "went to the Mauritanian armed forces on the border", near the southeastern town of Bassiknou, on Saturday evening, the source said without giving further details.

Some 74,000 Malians, who have been displaced by war and ethnic tensions, are in need of urgent help in the desert of Mauritania, the Doctors without Borders (MSF) aid group said Friday.

In the Mbera camp "humanitarian assistance is insufficient," said the group in a report.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who has opposed sending troops to combat Islamists in northern Mali, said Monday he would not rule out contributing to a U.N. force if the situation improves.

"If the situation changes... there will be nothing preventing Mauritania, as a U.N. member, from sending troops to the north (of Mali) or in the country's western regions to provide stability and security," he said at a press conference.

The conflict in Mali has caused nearly 150,000 people to flee the country, while about another 230,000 are internally displaced, the U.N. humanitarian agency said Tuesday.

According to OCHA, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has registered 144,500 refugees in neighboring countries -- 54,100 in Mauritania, 50,000 in Niger, 38,800 in Burkina Faso and 1,500 in Algeria.

A Mauritanian news website on Monday published images of a French citizen kidnapped last week by one of the armed Islamist groups controlling the north of neighboring Mali.

Two photos published on the site Alakhbar showed the man, identified as Alberto Rodriguez Leal, 61, with his head bowed, wearing a blue shirt and flanked by two armed men dressed in kakhi robes.

Mauritania's President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz flew home from France on Saturday, where he spent 40 days recovering after being shot by a soldier in what was officially described as an accident.

Tens of thousands of supporters lined the three kilometers (two-miles) of road between Nouakchott airport and the presidential palace, to welcome him back.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz will return to his country Saturday from France, where he was recovering after being "accidentally" shot by a soldier last month, state media reported.

Abdel Aziz was treated in France after the October 13 shooting. Officials say he was shot in the arm by a soldier who fired on the president's motorcade when it refused to stop on the road, but the opposition has raised doubts about the story.