On May 27, a 27-year-old man left his workplace in La Vila Joiosa (Alicante) heading to the home of an acquaintance who had been cited. He didn’t show up. On the way, he was accosted by three hooded men who, at gunpoint, forced him into a car with great force. They came to hit him with a hammer, before leaving the place at full speed.
According to the account documented by the Civil Guard, which has released the kidnapped man after eleven days in captivity, the victim was initially transferred to a flat in Santa Pola, where he remained locked up for two days, under permanent surveillance and tied up with zip ties.
During the captivity, always according to the police account, the young man was brutally attacked while being recorded to coerce his relatives in Algeria, his nationality, to pay a ransom in exchange for his release.
Five people have been arrested in the operation, all of them male Spanish nationals, as alleged perpetrators of a crime of kidnapping for extortion.
The complaint for the disappearance of this person was filed by a relative of the kidnapped before the Civil Guard of La Vila Joisa on May 29, in which the agents were informed that the young man had been kidnapped two days before by someone that he had telephoned a relative of the victim residing in Algeria, requesting a ransom of 350,000 euros for his release.
In the reconstruction of the events, the Civil Guard explains that, given the suspicion that the police forces could be on their trail, the captors transferred the kidnapped to a rural house located in a remote place in the municipality of Yecla (Murcia), in who was once again brutally attacked on several occasions, even through the use of an electric pistol, commonly known as a “taser”, while they were filming him to coerce the family into paying his ransom under threat of death, to which his relatives did not agree.
Once the possible place of captivity was located by the agents, on June 7, the Civil Guard carried out the entry and search operation, which resulted in the release of the hostage and the arrest of the two people who were guarding him.
Subsequently, and almost simultaneously, two other people directly linked to the kidnapping in Cartagena were arrested, as well as a fifth person responsible who was arrested last Tuesday in La Vila Joiosa.
These five people, all of Spanish nationality, with a history of robbery with violence, theft and misappropriation, among others, and aged between 19 and 28, after being made available to the Yecla, Cartagena and Villajoyosa Courts, have imprisoned as perpetrators of a kidnapping for extortion.
Regarding the young man, despite the fact that his captors kept him in appalling conditions for the duration of the kidnapping and with hardly any food, he was released conscious and walking on his own feet, although he did have some injuries.
The Operation -called Sitdown- has been carried out by the Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of the Command of Alicante, together with the Central Operational Unit (UCO), counting also for the phase of exploitation and release of the kidnapped and arrest of the kidnappers with the Special Intervention Unit (UEI).
