The investigation on the kidnapping of the two Spanish humanitarian workers and their Italian colleague on 23rd October, is oriented towards the track that the operation was led jointly by Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and some Polisario elements, according to well informed sources in Algiers. It is the two Aqmi elements who have made these revelations, after having been taken prisoners, during an ambush on the 22nd November, by some Algerian soldiers, to an armed group in Kabylia. The two Aqmi elements did not participate to the kidnapping in the Polisario HQ, but have given details on the operation. The kidnapping of the three Western people has been executed by Polisario elements themselves, which explains the easiness of the operation led in the very secured Polisario HQ in Tindouf. It is only in the desert that the Polisario elements have given their hostages to a group of terrorists led by an Algerian jidahist chief called Djaber Mohamed.
The latter himself takes orders from Emir Abou Zeid, who has decided to increase the kidnapping operations in the region. This subcontracting operation between Polisario elements and Aqmi is not the first one of its kind. Already at the end of the Libyan conflict, the Polisario mercenaries, who have fought on the side of Kadhafi, have brought with them many arms and ammunitions which have afterwards been delivered to Aqmi groups. The relations of interest tied between Polisario elements living on the Algerian territory and Aqmi, have been made easier thanks to the composition itself of the jihadist group. Aqmi is in fact, constituted essentially from former Algerian fighters of the former GSPC who have pledged their allegiance to Al Qaida in 2007. The most worrying in the confessions of the two arrested terrorists, is that Aqmi has made of the kidnapping of Western people a strategy. The terrorist groups consider, from now on, the whole region, extending from the Algerian South to Mauritania and the grand Malian and Nigerian North, as an area of war against Western people.
