New bad news about Algeria is making the headlines in the Spanish, North African and Sahelian media. According to information published on the website of the Spanish daily The Countryand published this Thursday, January 16, “the Spanish government has opened an investigation into the kidnapping of a Spanish tourist, who was allegedly kidnapped in southern Algeria by armed elements belonging to the Islamic State in the Great Sahara (EIGS) group and transferred to Neighboring Mali“. This investigation was opened following information provided to the Spanish authorities by “des sources locales”, qualified as “reliable and consistent» par The Countrypending their official confirmation by Algeria, which has still not reacted.
The Spanish tourist was kidnapped on Wednesday January 15 in southern Algeria by members of the EIGS terrorist group, but the exact location of the kidnapping was not specified. Knowing that all those accompanying the Spanish tourist were released at the Algerian-Malian border, one wonders what the Algerian authorities are waiting for to question them with a view to communicating about this terrorist act.
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Also confirmed by the Mauritanian site Saharamedia, Very aware of the activities of terrorist groups in the Sahel, this kidnapping comes just a week after the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued a warning advising British travelers not to travel to Algeria, and particularly to the border areas that this country shares with its neighbors to the East and those of the Sahel.
For its part, Spain has advised its nationals to report all their trips to Algeria both to the two Spanish consulates there and to the Algerian gendarmerie services, for greater security. Many other Western countries advise caution and the greatest vigilance to their nationals traveling to Algeria, still considered an extremely risky country that the army and police are incapable of securing. The validity of all these warnings, which deal a heavy blow to Algeria’s attempts to establish itself as a tourist destination, was confirmed in the space of a single week, following the kidnapping there six days from an Austrian woman in Niger, then from the new Spanish victim in Algeria.
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These two kidnappings were committed by the EIGS, this group born from a split with AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and created in 2015 by the former Polisario militiaman, Adnan Abu El Walid Es-Sahraoui, killed in 2022 in a French strike in Mali. This terrorist group, like AQIM, has significant ramifications in southern Algeria.
Which is normal, because apart from the JNIM (Support Group for Islam and Muslims) led by a Malian Tuareg (Iyad Ghali), protected by Algeria and established in southern Algeria, all the other terrorist groups operating in the Sahel have always been led by Algerian nationals, most of whom left the matrix of Algerian services during the dark decade of the 1990s.
