MADRID: Two Spanish nationals held hostage by Al-Qaeda’s North African branch since November have been freed and are on their way to the Mali-Burkina Faso border, Spanish media reported Monday.
Madrid declined to confirm the report, but a government source told El Pais daily that an official announcement would be made once the two aid workers Albert Vilalta, 35, and Roque Pascual, 50, were in a safe place.
A Malian security source told AFP that the pair was expected to arrive at the border "at any moment".
"They’re expected at the border at any moment and the operation in place is that a helicopter will collect them," said the source on condition of anonymity.
The helicopter is then to fly the two men to the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou, he said.
A Spanish government official on Sunday told AFP that "We are working for a happy conclusion of this case but the release has not yet taken place and therefore we ask all media to act carefully and responsibly."
The charity the men work for, Accio Solidaria, said on Monday morning they were waiting for official confirmation.
"We hope that during the course of the morning this bit of news will turn out to be positive," the aid group’s head Francesc Osan told Spanish radio RNE.
Pascual and Vilalta were freed on Sunday around midday and were to be taken aboard all-terrain vehicles along with Burkina Faso presidential mediator and advisor Mustafa Chafi, El Pais said.
The two aid workers were kidnapped north of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott in November, along with a third Spaniard, 39-year-old Alicia Gamez, who was freed in March.
The reported release comes after the August 16 transfer from Mauritania to Mali of the kidnap mastermind, Malian national Omar Sid’Ahmed Ould Hamma, who was jailed for 12 years by a Mauritanian court.
While not an AQIM militant himself, Hamma — nicknamed "Omar the Sahrawi" — has strong ties to the North African branch of Osama bin Laden’s terror network, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Malian security forces took an uncuffed Hamma to an unknown destination following his arrival, with a Malian justice source suggesting he could be living under house arrest.
Relations between the neighboring countries have been strained with Mauritania accusing Mali of being soft on AQIM after it released four prisoners in exchange for French hostage Pierre Camatte in February.
The reported release of Vilalta and Pascual has also exposed divisions in the AQIM network.
The remaining hostages are in the hands of a cell led by Algeria’s Mokhtar Belmokhtar, nicknamed "Belawar", who paid Hamma to kidnap them.
While Belmokhtar is considered more a businessman than a religious fanatic, he is believed to be under pressure from a radical branch of AQIM led by another Algerian, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid.
Zeid has overseen the deaths of two western hostages, Briton Edwin Dyer, and Frenchman Michel Germaneau. The latter was killed after a Franco-Mauritanian raid in an attempt to find him, in which seven of Zeid’s men were killed.
He is believed to be demanding the execution of the Spaniards in retaliation for the July 22 military operation.
