The Civil Guard has freed in Seville the Algerian writer and opposition figure Hicham Aboud, exiled in France, who had been kidnapped on Thursday at half past eleven at night in the upper area of Barcelona. Several witnesses saw Aboud, carrying a suitcase, and asking for an address, which he could not find. At that moment, several hooded men forced him into a vehicle and took him away, shouting. The Mossos d’Esquadra, who are investigating the case, detected the same car an hour later, passing through Vendrell (Tarragona), which led to issuing a warning to all the police. The Civil Guard released him tied up, but in good condition, in Lebrija, early in the morning on Saturday. Aboud, 69, is the author of books highly critical of the Algerian authorities, such as ‘Lthe generals mafia‘.
The dissident writer landed on Thursday at El Prat airport from Brussels. The man was traveling alone, according to police sources, and went to an address in the city of Barcelona that he never found. Several witnesses told the Mossos that they saw the man, carrying his belongings, and asking the people he passed on Raset Street for directions. Until suddenly, a vehicle appeared, from which three hooded men emerged and forcibly took him away. Initially, the Mossos suspected that it could be a mooring: an illegal detention typical of the criminal world, in which they settle debts between themselves. Nobody had called the Mossos nor were there any reports of disappearance.
But a key element gave a twist to the case: the Mossos found Aboud’s mobile phone, which he lost in the struggle with the individuals who arrested him, amidst screams. When the agents managed to access the mobile phone, they discovered that it belonged to an Algerian dissident. Almost at the same time, they learned that the Civil Guard had managed to free him in Lebrija, after a brilliant race by car from Barcelona to Andalusia, more than 900 kilometers away.
The investigation also made it possible to locate, thanks to the different cameras in the area, at least two suspects who the day before were already in the area where the writer was kidnapped. One of them is one of the two people who have been arrested in Lebrija by the Civil Guard. There, the agents observed three vehicles prepared for removal, but in the presence of the Civil Guard they fled the scene. The agents detained two people, and found the writer, of Algerian nationality, tied up, who told them that he had been kidnapped in Barcelona.
Dalil Essakali, French lawyer for the Algerian writer, who lives in exile in France, already said that he suspected that he had been kidnapped in Barcelona, when he landed at the El Prat airport and lost track of him. “It is not the first time that he has been the target of an attempted kidnapping,” said Essakali, who recalled that French justice has an open investigation into an attempted kidnapping against the writer in 2021. The World Amazigh Assembly (AMA), organization of the Berber people, was the first to raise the alarm on Saturday by showing its concern over Aboud’s disappearance. The Mossos and the Civil Guard maintain an open investigation to determine what happened, and who else may be involved in the kidnapping.
“Hitmen in the pay of the regime”
Rachid Raha, president of the World Amazigh Assembly, an NGO based in Brussels, which defends the cultural interests of the Berber population, said this Monday in Rabat that, after being released, Aboud said that he had been kidnapped in Barcelona “by a group of hitmen in the pay of the intelligence services of the Algerian military regime.”
The writer and nationalist opponent, originally from a Berber region located east of Algiers, explained in a video broadcast among the members of the AMA that the Civil Guard located him “by chance” in Lebrija, where the criminals who had captured him had been located. hidden from police pursuit. “Aboud has presented a complaint for kidnapping before the Spanish justice system,” said Raha, who directs a newspaper published in Morocco in the Amazigh or Berber language, reports Juan Carlos Sanz from Rabat.
Algeria broke diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021 after accusing the Rabat Government of “hostile actions” for providing support to the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia, the main Algerian Berber region, an organization classified as terrorist by the Algiers authorities, and which In 2019 he joined the popular movement of Hirak which forced President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s departure from power.
Last March, the Algerian Government allowed the Rif National Party, created in 2021 in Europe to gather international support for the cause of independence of the Rif region of northern Morocco, with a Berber majority, to inaugurate a representative office in the capital of Algeria. Between 2016 and 2017, the Rif, and especially the Al Hoceima area, experienced one of the largest waves of social protests of the reign of Mohamed VI. The revolt resulted in hundreds of arrests, and sentences of up to 20 years in prison for the leaders of the movement.