A rebel alliance in Mali said Tuesday announced it had negotiated the liberation of a Spanish man who was kidnapped in southern Algeria last week.
The Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, a coalition of separatist armed groups in Mali’s predominately Tuareg north, said on X that it freed Spanish citizen Gilbert Navarro.
“The former Spanish hostage, Mr. Navarro Giane Gilbert, has been released by the FLA and is in good health,” said Mohamed Maouloud Ramaadan, a spokesperson for the separatist movement.
Boubacar Sadigh Ould Taleb, the FLA’s communications officer, told The Associated Press that Navarro was kidnapped on January 17 by a “transnational mafia”, without identifying the group.
Wassim Nasr, FRANCE 24’s terrorist expert, said the group consisted of young bandits hoping to make money from the abduction. “They were answering a call made by the local Islamic State group to kidnap westerners,” he said.
Taleb said armed men from the FLA then managed to locate Navarro and his kidnappers near the town of Indelimane in Mali’s eastern region of Ménaka, more than 322 kilometres south of the Algerian border. After surrounding the kidnappers, the rebel fighters were able to negotiate the Spanish man’s release on Monday, he said.
Nasr said “the kidnappers left the Spanish guy [at the handover] spot … and the rebels came in and took him”, adding that the “IS group was just 40 kilometres away from the rallying point”.
Kidnapped Austrian woman still missing
Taleb said the former hostage will now be handed over to the Algerian authorities “so that he can be reunited with his family”.
Spain’s foreign ministry said last week that a Spanish man had been kidnapped in an unspecified northern African country.
Algerian authorities did not comment on either the abduction or the Tuareg rebels’ plans to hand over Navarro.
In mid-January, Austria’s foreign ministry said announced that one of its citizens had been kidnapped in northern Niger, which also shares a border with Mali.
Nasr described the woman as elderly, ”more than 80 years old”, and said she had been abducted in the city of Agadez where she had lived for years.
“As far as we know, [she has been] transferred to Mali and handed over to an Islamic State group offshoot,” he said.
Kidnappings have rarely been reported in Algeria in recent years but Africa’s largest country by area continues to face instability along its southern borders with Niger and Mali.
The two countries are among the states in West Africa’s Sahel region that have been upended by military coups and are now led by juntas after previous governments failed to quell violence and discontent. Abductions have become increasingly common in Mali, according to data from the non-profit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data.
The Malian government has long claimed Tuareg separatists maintain links to Islamic militants and has replaced its security partnerships with Western nations with mercenary groups including Russia’s Africa Corps, the successor of the paramilitary group Wagner, to combat them.
(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)
Leave a Comment