December 1, 2009 - The Daily Star - Mauritania Three Aid Workers Snatched

NOUAKCHOTT: Three Spanish volunteer aid workers were kidnapped by gunmen while delivering supplies to impoverished villages in Mauritania, and Spain’s interior minister said Monday he suspected Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists. Two men and a woman were kidnapped in the West African country, according to Julia Tabernejo, a spokeswoman for Barcelona-based aid group Barcelona Accion Solidaria. The three were in a 4-wheel drive vehicle at the very back end of a convoy when the attack happened Sunday.

“I think the others heard shooting, and when they stopped, the car was empty,” she said. “Those three were no longer in it.” She identified the aid workers as Albert Vilalta, Roque Pascual and Alicia Gamez. The two men are businessmen and are about 50 years old. She said Gamez is a civil servant in the court system.

A Spanish Foreign Ministry official said the aid workers were abducted Sunday while traveling in a convoy of 13 vehicles. The kidnapping occurred after two of the vehicles became separated from the convoy for unknown reasons, according to the official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry rules.

A ministry statement said Mauritanian forces are now accompanying the rest of the convoy at Spain’s request.

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told reporters on Monday that he feared the kidnapping was the work of extremists.

“All signs are that it is a kidnapping,” he said in Brussels as he entered a meeting with European Union officials. “If that is the case, as I fear it is, everything suggests it is a kidnapping by AQMI, which is Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa. It would not be the first kidnapping it has carried out in that area of European or American aid workers.”

Mauritania, once known as a predominantly moderate Muslim nation on Africa’s western coast, has been rocked by attacks by the Al-Qaeda group.

The Islamist group operates mainly in Algeria but is suspected of crossing the country’s porous desert borders to spread violence in the rest of northwestern Africa.

In June, American Christopher Leggett, 39, was fatally shot in the Mauritanian capital, not far from a school that he helped run. The North African Al-Qaeda group claimed responsibility, saying they killed the Tennessee native because he allegedly was trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

In 2007, gunmen in Mauritania killed four French tourists. In 2008, the world famous Dakar Rally auto race was canceled after organizer’s received threats of a possible attack.

The Spanish aid workers were attacked while delivering supplies to villages along a 2400-kilometer road that links the capital, Nouakchott, to Nouadhibou to the north, a Mauritanian police official said. He asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

“The Spaniards were inside their car traveling in the humanitarian convoy which had gone to distribute humanitarian aid to the poorest of the poor of Nouadhibou when the unknown gunmen started shooting at them before kidnapping them,” said the official, a top police officer in the capital.