Algeria: Aid Workers Kidnapping: Two Arrests In Mauritania

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Two men were arrested yesterday in Nouadhibou, in the north-west, in connection to the kidnapping of tree European aid workers between October 22 and 23 in Rabuni, a Sahrawi camp near the Algerian town of Tindouf.

According to the Mauritanian ANI news agency, two Sahrawi men were arrested for the kidnapping. Well-informed ANI sources indicated that the three aid workers – the Italian Rossella Urru and Spaniards Ainhoa Fernández de Rincón and Enric Gonyalons – were already handed over to the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) terrorist group for a “large sum of money”.

Based on the reconstruction, the two Sahrawi entered Mauritanian territory around ten days ago and rented an appartment in Nouadhibou, where they were under police surveillance. The police then decided to arrest and transfer the men to a detention centre in Nouakchott. It remains unclear when and if the three hostages were actually handed over to the AQMI. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

MISNA

MISNA, or the Missionary International Service News Agency, provides daily news ‘from, about and for’ the 'world’s Souths', not just in the geographical sense, since December 1997.

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