The National Police have arrested two people for the kidnapping and murder of a young man of Algerian nationality in Alicante.
Those arrested are a mother and son, aged 81 and 40 respectively, who allegedly tortured their victim for more than 15 hours, while sending images to his family through social networks, to try to get them to pay a ransom of 30,000 euros.
The investigation indicates that the alleged murderer had a dispute with the victim over a debt and brutally hit him on the head during an argument. The injuries were serious but did not cause immediate death.
According to the Police, while he was dying, the alleged kidnappers subjected their badly injured victim to more torture and humiliation with the aim of taking images with which to extort money from the family.
Eventually realising just how seriously he was injured, the woman called an ambulance. The two suspects said they had found the victim like this when they arrived at the house.
He died just 24 hours after being admitted to the General Hospital due to the severity of his injuries.
The police investigation concluded that the perpetrators of the violent death were an 81-year-old woman and her 40-year-old son. They are considered to be the alleged perpetrators of the murder of the 18-year-old man whom they kidnapped and tortured for fifteen hours, brutalizing him until he was practically lifeless.
The victim was admitted to the hospital in critical condition. According to the Police, the possible motive for the incident was to extort money from the family of the deceased, to whom they sent photos and videos of their relative while they were torturing him, demanding a payment of 30,000 euros in exchange for releasing him.
The macabre event occurred last Thursday, 7 September, with the investigation completed in just two days by the UDEV Homicide Group and the First Organised Crime Group from the Alicante Provincial Judicial Police Brigade
Mid-morning on the day of the kidnap and assault, the Algerian consulate communicated with the Alicante police referring to a possible kidnapping of an Algerian citizen residing in the city.
The matter had been brought to the attention of the Algerian Consulate by relatives of the alleged victim from abroad, who had received videos and photos through a social network of their relative. In the photos, the victim appeared lying unconscious on the floor, his face covered with a mop, bleeding and bruised. The ransom demanded by the captors for his release was 30,000 euros.
Late in the afternoon, a police team was called to a home where SAMUR paramedics were treating a man who they found in a house, bleeding profusely with numerous cuts across his entire body. When the agents arrived and inspected the scene, they immediately realised the connection with the earlier report.
With the injured man were two more people, a woman and her son, who said that they were acquaintances of the victim and that they had found him in that state, so they called the health services.
They told the police that they were on holiday in Alicante, residing in another house. They called at the house because the victim, along with five other individuals, had stolen their money and other belongings the day before and that they were hoping to get everything back.
While the agents were collecting information, two acquaintances of the victim, unaware of his condition, appeared at the Police Station to alert the Police that they had seen photos of their friend on a social network lying on the floor of his apartment, naked and with a mop on his face.
Several police units then moved to the scene of the incident to find the suspect’s mother cleaning the blood from the floor with a mop, supposedly to remove any possible vestige that could incriminate her and her son. The latter was not in the house at the time.
The woman was detained and taken to the police station, at which point the search for her son began. He was located and detained an hour later.
From that moment on, the house was rigorously guarded by the National Police until the arrival of scene of crime officers from the judicial commission.
During the inspection clear indications were obtained about the possible sequence of events, confirming all the data handled by the Judicial Police investigators.
There were blood stains all over the house and furniture, and even on the victim’s mattress, which they had turned over in an attempt to hide the traces of blood. Regarding the videos and photos sent to the family, the agents determined that they had been taken in the same house where the victim was found.
The mop with which the arrested woman was caught trying to clean the remains of her blood was the same one with which the alleged kidnappers covered her face when they took a photo of her to demand her ransom. Everything agreed with the working hypothesis initially established by the researchers and the mother and son were then arrested and charged.
