An Algerian missing for 26 years found alive sequestered in his neighbor’s home

After a quarter of a century, the relatives of a man who disappeared in 1998 finally found him in the same village where he lived. He would have been sequestered all these years by a neighbor in the enclosure where he kept his cattle. The suspect was arrested.

It’s a story that is going around the world, reported by French and Algerian media, but also shared massively on social networks by Indian, American and even Mexican accounts. In Algeria, a man who went missing 26 years ago was found kidnapped in his neighbor’s home, the Algerian authorities announced on Tuesday May 14. The man, now 45 years old, disappeared in 1998, when he was in his twenties, without leaving any trace.

Several Algerian media reported this incredible story. According to the Algerian news site TSA, “tIt all begins in 1999, when Omar, then barely 20 years old, mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace behind him.. As the years pass, “out of sadness and grief, the mother of the missing person finally gave up the ghost”explains the newspaper, but “a quarter of a century later, a twist of events! A mysterious publication posted on social networks in 2024 brings back old memories, and above all the hope of finding Omar safe and sound.”

“The latter has been kidnapped for all this time by an individual living in the town of El Guedid (Djelfa), where the victim’s family lives, clearly indicates the post posted online by a relative of the alleged kidnapper”, explains TSA. According to the national daily El Khabarthe relatives of the missing man then set out to try to find Omar, and by coming across clues they ended up searching the house of a guard who owns livestock.

The family was notably “remembered that after the disappearance of their child, the victim’s dog, which probably smelled of its master, did not leave the threshold of the kidnapper’s house, before the dog also disappeared”reports the Maghreb Emergent site.

It was ultimately in the hay that the family discovered Omar. Relatives, quoted by media, claimed that during his captivity the man could see and hear his family members through an opening in the enclosure “but was unable to scream or flee because of a spell her captor had cast on her”. The prosecution indicates in a press release shared by radio M that the suspect, a 61-year-old local municipal employee, was arrested and “will be presented to the prosecution immediately after the end of the investigation”. The public prosecutor further assures that “the author of this heinous crime will be prosecuted with all the rigor required by the laws of the Republic”.