Algeria FM Says No News On the Italian Women Kidnapped in Illizi

Algeria Foreign Minister, Mourad Medelci, said Sunday he has not got any new information on the issue of the female Italian national abducted in early February 2011, in the locality of Alidena, in Illizi province, 2000 km south of the capital Algiers.

At the sidelines of the opening of the spring session of the National Assembly (lower house of the parliament), the local APS news agency has quoted Mr Mdelci as saying that “I don’t have any information on the progress of the issue” of the kidnapped Italian national.

The Italian tourist arrived on 20 January 2011 to spend a 14 day vacation in the city of Djanet, 250 southern Illizi, close to the borders with Niger and Libya. 

She was kidnapped in her eighth day in Djanet, with her guide and a cook by a group of armed men riding in two trucks. Later on, the kidnapers released the guide and the cook, and then let the westerner to call on phone the manager of the travel agency to which she booked her staying in Djanet, to inform police.

In 2010, Algeria, Niger, Mauritania and Mali set up a joint military headquarters in the south of Algeria to improve co-ordination in combating al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).