Kidnapped Spanish aid workers still missing in Mauritania

By Tiziana Cauli

BARCELONA -- Roque Pascual is a typical Spanish soccer fan: he'd never miss a derby match of his city team, not so long as a radio or TV is available. He was traveling across Mauritania in an aid convoy when he called a fellow NGO worker to celebrate the goal scored against Madrid by Barcelona’s striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

That was the last contact he made before he and two other volunteers traveling in the same four-wheel drive car were kidnapped in what is feared to be an al-Qaeda assault to a 13-vehicle aid convoy Nov. 29 around 7:30 pm GMT about 150 kilometers from capital Nuakchot.

Barcelona-based non-governmental Acció Solidària’s members Roque Pascual, Alicia Gámez and Albert Vilalta are still missing while Mauritanian security forces and Spain’s intelligence keep searching for them.

Fears over an al-Qaeda link to the kidnapping are fueled by political debates and news columns in Spain, which is believed to be among the main targets of the terrorist organization’s North-African branch Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.

A judicial investigation was launched by Spain’s National Court December 1, while Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero asked for discretion over the search operations. Speaking from Estoril, Portugal, where he was attending the 2009 Ibero-American Summit, Zapatero said kidnappers may take advantage of an uncontrolled information flow.

“Everybody can understand that we need to work and act extremely carefully and discreetly," he said. "Kidnappers are also listening and we must not give them anything that may play in their favor,” he said.

Zapatero’s government offered Mauritania the support of its Civil Guard troops which are deployed in the country to prevent illegal immigration to Spain, but the offer was declined.

The kidnapping came as a shock to the city of Barcelona, where the three volunteers enjoyed a great visibility due to the prominent roles they play in the community.

About 1,600 Facebook users have been posting comments daily on the wall of a support group created immediately after the kidnapping. Most of the posts are in Catalan - the official language of Catalonia and its capital Barcelona, in north-eastern Spain.

Pascual, the CEO of a construction company, is also the treasurer of a B-division soccer club in a town near Barcelona. This was his seventh mission to Africa as an aid worker for Acció Solidària.

Friends of Gámez, a Justice Department functionary, told journalists she used to spend her holidays volunteering in developing countries. The morning after the kidnapping, dozens of her colleagues gathered in shock in front of the city’s courts where she works.

Employees of two local public enterprises for whom Vilalta acted as director general also gathered in front of the two road tunnels they maintain Friday to express their solidarity with the kidnapped and their families, who chose to be represented by Acció Solidària director Francesc Osan in all their public statements.

According to Osan, the NGO was well known in the area for the aid deliveries it carried out regularly on the same routes, which made it easy for assaulters to track the convoy down.

Osan, who said the convoy was “an easy target,” told Spanish TV station Telecinco that the area where the abduction occurred was not an alert zone. “Whatever happened in Mauritania was always far (from there), on the border with Mali,” he said.

According to Spanish newspaper El Paìs, previous kidnappings in the area only resolved in at least six months with the liberation of hostages in Mali after 3 to 5 million euro ($4.5 to 7.5 million) ransoms were paid. In one case, the prisoner was killed.