Journalist and writer Hicham Aboud was released in good health in Seville after being kidnapped from a street in Barcelona

An article published by the Spanish newspaper EL PAIS stated that:

The Civil Guard in Seville freed Algerian writer and journalist Hicham Aboud, after he was kidnapped Thursday night at around 11:30 PM in the upper part of Barcelona. Eyewitnesses saw Aboud carrying a bag, asking for an address he couldn’t find. At that moment, several masked men approached him, forced him into a car, and drove away amid screams. The Catalan police, who are investigating the case, discovered the same car an hour later, passing through Vendrell (Tarragona), which led to an alert being issued to all police forces. Aboud was found bound but in poor condition in Lebrija early Saturday morning. Aboud is 69 years old.

Hicham Aboud arrived on Thursday at El Prat Airport from Brussels. He was traveling alone, according to police sources, and was heading to an address in Barcelona he could not locate. Witnesses told the police they saw him carrying his belongings and asking for an address from people passing by on Rassett Street. Suddenly, a car appeared, and three masked men emerged, forcing him into the vehicle. Initially, the police suspected it might be a case of “criminal kidnapping,” a type of illegal detention that happens in criminal circles to settle debts. No one had contacted the police, and there were no reports of a disappearance.

However, a crucial element shifted the course of the case when the police found Aboud’s phone, which he had lost during the struggle with the men who abducted him amid his screams. When the police accessed the phone, they discovered that he was an Algerian journalist and dissident. Around the same time, the police were informed that the Civil Guard had freed him in Lebrija after a high-speed chase from Barcelona to Andalusia, covering over 900 kilometers.

The investigation also led to the identification of two suspects, thanks to cameras in the area where Hicham Aboud had been abducted the previous day. One of the suspects is among the two individuals arrested in Lebrija by the Civil Guard. There, the police noticed three vehicles prepared to flee, but they ran off when they saw the police. Two people were arrested, and Aboud, who holds Algerian citizenship, was found tied up. He stated that he was kidnapped in Barcelona.

Delil Sakkili, Hicham Aboud’s French lawyer living in France, said he suspected Aboud had been kidnapped in Barcelona when he landed at El Prat Airport, and he was lost. “This is not the first time he has been targeted by a kidnapping attempt,” the lawyer added, recalling that French justice opened an investigation into another attempted kidnapping in 2021. The World Amazigh Association, an organization representing the Amazigh people, was the first to raise the alarm on Saturday, expressing concern over Aboud’s disappearance. Catalan police and the Civil Guard are still investigating the case to understand what happened and who might be involved in the kidnapping.

“Hired killers from the regime,” said Rachid Raha, president of the World Amazigh Association, a Brussels-based NGO that defends the cultural interests of the Amazigh people. He said in Rabat on Monday that Aboud stated after his release that he had been kidnapped in Barcelona “by a group of hitmen from the intelligence services of the Algerian military regime.”

In a video, Hicham Aboud said that the Civil Guard found him “by chance” in Lebrija, where the criminals who kidnapped him were hiding to escape the police chase. Rachid Raha, who heads a newspaper in the Amazigh language in Morocco, said Hicham Aboud had filed a complaint with the Spanish courts about his kidnapping, according to reports by Juan Carlos Sanz from Rabat.