BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — A rebel alliance in Mali said Tuesday it has freed a Spanish man who was kidnapped in southern Algeria last week.
The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a coalition of separatist armed groups in Mali’s predominantly Tuareg north, said on social media platform X that it has released Spanish national 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, spokesman for the separatist movement.
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Boubacar Sadigh Ould Taleb, the communications officer for the Azawad Liberation Front, told The Associated Press that Navarro was kidnapped by a “transnational mafia” on Jan. 17, without identifying the group.
Taleb said gunmen from the Azawad Liberation Front located Navarro and his captors near the town of Indelimane in Mali’s eastern Menaka region. After surrounding the kidnappers, rebel fighters were able to negotiate the Spanish man’s release on Monday, he said.
“The former hostage will be handed over to Algerian authorities very soon so that he can be reunited with his family,” Taleb said.
Spain’s Foreign Ministry said last week that a Spanish man had been kidnapped in an unspecified North African country. Spanish media reported that the man was captured in southern Algeria and taken to Mali by Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would not confirm the media reports or reveal the location of the kidnapping.
Algerian authorities have not commented on the kidnapping. Kidnappings have been rarely reported in Algeria in recent years, but a decade ago militant groups in the region routinely used kidnappings for ransom to finance their operations.
Earlier this month, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said unidentified gunmen had kidnapped an Austrian aid worker in Agadez, Niger, about 450 kilometers from the largely porous border with Algeria. The ministry said it had informed Algeria.
Algeria, Africa’s largest country by area, has scrambled to tackle instability and terrorism in the vast Sahara, but the kidnapping of the Spanish man came months after a Swiss tourist traveling through the desert was killed.