It was an extremely difficult ordeal that our colleague, Hichem Aboud, endured for 24 harrowing hours. Arriving in Barcelona on the evening of Thursday, October 17, he was kidnapped by four armed and hooded men, just a few meters from the residence where he was supposed to stay during his trip. He was violently placed in the back seat of an unmarked car, which sped off towards Malaga as ordered by the gang leader, who jubilantly announced over the phone to his superiors: “We got him.”
Throughout the journey, which lasted all night from the 17th to the 18th of October and continued until noon, our colleague imagined all possible and imaginable scenarios. But the one that recurred most frequently, with insistence, was that of a forced repatriation to Algeria, where a team of torturers was waiting to make him pay for his journalistic activities. These activities were mainly dedicated to exposing the atrocities of the Algerian regime, including the repression of free expression, corruption, pillaging, and everything that had caused chaos in a wealthy country.
All his attempts to escape failed miserably, and he had to rely on God, hoping for a miracle to abort the criminal operation mounted by a terrorist organization based in southern Spain, which the Algerian secret services had called upon to capture journalist Hichem Aboud. This was a first in the annals of African and Maghrebian press.
On the banks of a river in Labrija, a village about fifty kilometers from the city of Seville, the miracle finally happened. As four terrorists were preparing to put their hostage, blindfolded and gagged, on a riverboat, with his hands tightly tied and his mouth sealed shut, suddenly, a squadron of Guardia Civil vehicles stormed the area. It was a rout among the terrorists. Of the whole group, only a Senegalese and a Moroccan remained holding Hichem Aboud by the arms. They were finally arrested by members of the Spanish security services.
It was the end of the nightmare for our colleague, who was taken to the city’s civil hospital for the necessary care, before starting the security and judicial procedures of the investigation. The first elements revealed a shameful deal between a state that claims to be respectable and an international terrorist organization composed of mercenaries of various nationalities, to traffic drugs and protect the movements of drug traffickers.
At the end of the ordeal, a very emotional Hichem Aboud declared: “I cannot find the words to express all my gratitude to the Spanish Guardia Civil, and especially the members of the Lebrija brigade.” Our colleague added that his lawyer, Me Essakali Abdeljalil, “would soon write to the Spanish Prime Minister to denounce this hostile act by the Algerian regime, which had called upon a terrorist organization on Iberian soil to organize the kidnapping of a peaceful journalist.”
The editorial team of lemediterraneen24.com, which had shown its solidarity with its journalist and director throughout his disappearance, is pleased with this happy ending to a painful and terrible ordeal. But all’s well that ends well.