Missing boy found alive after 26 years in animal pen near his home
A just-solved disappearance case is dominating the world press this week: a young man who disappeared without a trace when he was 17 has been found after 26 years. He had been locked up all this time just a few hundred feet from his family.
In 1998, an Algerian teenager mysteriously disappeared. Almost 30 years later, the now 45-year-old man was found with his neighbor, who held him captive in his cattle shed.
The prosecutor's office of Djelfa governorate, 300 kilometers from Algiers, announced this on Tuesday. Following a message shared on social networks, the poor man was discovered in a neighbor's house which was searched by gendarmes. So reports the media channel Midi Libre.
This animal pen in which he was held for nearly 30 years is located in the village of El-Guédid, in central Algeria. The victim's relatives told the media that while he was held captive, he could not only hear but also see his family through a small opening in the fenced-in area, but was "unable to scream or run away because of a spell cast on him by his captor." A story that is far from over and gets more and more mysterious.
The 61-year-old neighbor is a local municipal employee. For decades he lived normally, as if nothing had happened, as if no one had disappeared a stone's throw from his home.
The prosecution reports that the suspect has been arrested and will be tried after questioning.
(FVDV and AsD for Tagtik/Source: Midi Libre/Illustration: Unsplash)
