A man has been arrested on charges of having kidnapped and held prisoner for around thirty years a neighbour , who disappeared in 1996 when he was a teenager and was found last night, in a state of serious abandonment, in a hole - hidden with hay – inside a sheep farm.
It happened in Algeria, in Djelfa , a city 300 km south of the capital Algiers.
The complaint presented to the national gendarmerie of El Guedid by the missing man's brother was decisive in giving a turning point to the investigation, which gave the authorities the suspicion that the neighbor was hiding something.
«Following this report - the authorities explained - the public prosecutor ordered the national gendarmerie to open an in-depth investigation and justice officials went to the house in question. The missing person (BA) has been found and the suspect, 61-year-old, owner of the house, has been arrested,” the statement added.
“The Prosecutor's Office has ordered medical and psychological treatment for the victim and the suspect will be brought before the Court as soon as the investigation is completed,” the court said.
The note concludes by underlining that "the author of this heinous crime will be prosecuted with all the severity required by the laws of the Republic".
The video of the discovery of the man, found in a pitiful state, with shabby clothes and a long beard , has gone viral on Algerian social media. According to local Algerian media reports, the victim's family previously believed the man had been kidnapped and killed by armed Islamic terrorist groups active in Algeria in the 1990s, when he was just 16 years old.
(Unioneonline/lf)
