The judicial authorities of Djelfa, 300 km south of Algiers, the capital of Algeria, today arrested a man accused of having kidnapped a neighbor for around thirty years, found yesterday evening safe and sound, albeit in a state of serious abandonment , in a hay-covered hole on a sheep farm. The Djelfa court reports this in a note.
The Prosecutor's Office received two days ago, on May 12, 2024, through the regional division of the national gendarmerie of El Guedid, a complaint against an unknown person according to which the complainant's brother, Omar Ben Amrane, missing for about 30 years, was in the house of one of their neighbors, inside a sheep pen.”
«Following this report, the public prosecutor of the Idrissia court (Djelfa province) 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 Prosecutor's Office 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 went viral on Algerian social media, found in a pitiful state, with scruffy clothes and a long beard. According to local Algerian media reports, the victim's family previously believed that she had been kidnapped and killed by armed Islamic terrorist groups active in Algeria in the 1990s, when she was just 16 years old.