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<\/a><\/p>\n15 December 2011<\/p>\n
\nWestern Saharan rebels have detained people implicated in the October kidnapping of three Europeans in Algeria, the APS agency quoted rebel officials as saying on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“They were acting on behalf of a criminal organisation unknown until now,” Khatri Eddouh, president of the Polisario parliament, was quoted as telling journalists late Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The report did not say how many people had been detained.<\/p>\n
“We will expend all necessary efforts and collaborate with neighbouring countries and even other countries to free the hostages,” he said.<\/p>\n
A Spanish man and woman and an Italian woman were seized in Algeria in October and are purportedly held by an Al-Qaeda splinter group that has claimed their abduction on Saturday, Jamat Tawhid Wal Jihad Fi Garbi Afriqqiya (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa).<\/p>\n
The group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, saying it had broken away from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which was behind several other recent attacks and abductions in the region.<\/p>\n
The hostages were seen alive in a video shown to an AFP correspondent in Bamako on Monday.<\/p>\n
Polisario fighters took up arms for an independent state in Western Sahara after Morocco annexed the area in 1976 after a Spanish withdrawal. The UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991. – ANP\/AFP<\/em><\/p>\nAllAfrica – All the Time<\/p>\n
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