Three Europeans were released in exchange for three Islamists in West Africa, a negotiator told reporters Thursday.
An Italian woman, Rossella Urru, and a Spanish man and woman, Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez del Rincon, boarded planes home after arriving in Burkina Faso Wednesday for the negotiation. Gonyalons had been shot in the leg, according to CTV.
They had been held hostage by the al-Qaeda-related terrorist group Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).
In May, in exchange for the three hostages, the group had demanded from the countries involved 30 million euros ($37 million) and the release of two West Sahara people who had been arrested for the kidnapping, according to AFP. The negotiator said he did not know whether the ransom money had been paid.
The three Europeans were working as aid workers when they were captured at a refugee camp in Algeria that houses people from a disputed territory near Algeria, Mauritania, and Morocco.
Still under the group’s control are six French hostages, and also Swedish, Dutch, and South African hostages kidnapped over the past two years.
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