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Romania thanks Morocco for ‘important support’ for release of hostage held in Sahel since 2015
Romania on Wednesday thanked the Kingdom of Morocco for its “important support” for the release of Romanian hostage Iulian Ghergu?, who had been held in the Sahel region since 2015, https://northafricapost.com/ informs.
In a statement, the Romanian Foreign Ministry announced the release of the security officer from a manganese mine in northern Burkina Faso, near the borders of Mali and Niger, who was kidnapped on April 4, 2015 by the Al Mourabitoun group, which has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), while thanking Morocco for its “important support” for his release.
According to the ministry, Iulian Ghergu? is currently safe in Romania, where he returned on Wednesday.
For his part, President Klaus Iohannis thanked, via the social network X (formerly Twitter), the “external partners who supported” Romania “in this difficult undertaking.”
Romanian citizen Iulian Ghergut, who was kidnapped in Burkina Faso eight years ago, has been release and he has already returned to Romania, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) informs on Wednesday.
According to the MAE, the fact that Ghergut has successfully returned to Romania "is the result of the combined work of all the institutions involved in the interinstitutional crisis unit, which never ceased to pull all political-diplomatic strings at its disposal for his release."
Iulian Ghergut, who worked as a security guard at a manganese mine in Tambao, the northern side of the African state Burkina Faso, was kidnapped in 2015 by an Islamic group called Al-Mourabitoun, alongside other foreign citizens. The Romanian, who was born in the Traian village, the Sambaoani rural town, in Neamt Couty, was taken hostage on April 4, 2015, in am ambush that targeted the off-road car he used for patrolling, according to AFP.
At the time when he was kidnapped, an interinstitutional crisis unit was formed, involving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Ministry of Interior and the Presidential Administration,
As soon as he was kidnapped, the Romanian appeared in a video published online. Later on, the DIICOT [the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism] opened a criminal case and started the criminal prosecution in rem for acts of terrorism, in relation to the kidnapping of the Romanian.
On July 2, 2017, the Al Qaida branch in Mali published another video showing six foreing hostages, among whom there was Australian Arthur Kenneth Elliott, aged 82, French Sophie Petronin and Romanian Iulian Ghergut, as according to an announcement at that time belonging to SITE, am American centre specialized in monitoring Islamic sites, according to the AFP.