A man who disappeared almost 30 years ago was discovered in a hole in his neighbor’s house. He is said to have been kidnapped by his neighbor when he was 17.
A missing man who was missing for almost 30 years has now been discovered just outside his own family home. As the Daily Mail reported, it is Omar Bin Omran, who disappeared 27 years ago at the age of 17 in the Algerian town of Djelfa. His family had assumed he was killed during Algeria’s civil war, which raged in the 1990s to early 2000s.
In reality, the Algerian was in his neighbor’s apartment. Bin Omran was found there in a hole on May 12th – less than 200 meters from his family’s home.
The kidnap victim’s 61-year-old neighbor was subsequently arrested by police, according to the Daily Mail. The man, who worked as a civil servant and lived alone, is now under police surveillance. According to reports, he bought a noticeable amount of food for a single person.
The Algerian newspaper El Khabar reported that a dog that detected Bin Omran’s scent near the suspected kidnapper’s house was allegedly poisoned by him to keep the family away.
A video shared on social media shows Bin Omran in a hole that authorities said was in a former sheepfold on the suspected kidnapper’s property. According to El Khabar, the kidnapped man was apparently in shock when he was discovered surrounded by bales of hay and with straw in his hair.
As the Daily Mail further reported, Bin Omran was found after the suspect’s brother apparently expressed disagreement on social media over an inheritance dispute. Based on this tip, the family stormed the house and discovered their relative, who was believed to be dead. The suspected kidnapper tried to escape, but was stopped and then arrested by the police.
Prosecutors in Djelfa, a city of around 500,000 people south of the coastal capital Algiers, said bin Omran would receive psychological care after his rescue. According to the newspaper El Khabar, the prosecutor’s office has promised that the “perpetrator of this heinous crime” will be sentenced with “harshness.”
As the Daily Mail reports, it has not yet been clarified why the man did not call for help sooner or was able to escape. Algerian media reported that Bin Omran claimed he was unable to call for help “because of a spell” placed on him by his alleged kidnapper. However, it is suspected that his poor mental health could be responsible, reports Daily Mail.
The case could be one of the most protracted kidnapping cases. In a similar case from 1991, the then eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped by a couple in California and remained missing for over 18 years, reports “Spiegel”. Dugard was held in cruel conditions and subjected to extreme sexual abuse. The abductee had two children from her kidnapper and, according to reports in Spiegel, later said that she adapted to her kidnappers in order to survive.
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