20120118
AFP
An Algerian regional security official who was kidnapped by armed youths from a town near the border with Libya is expected to be released Tuesday, according to a local senator.

Mohamed el Aid Khelfi, the top security official for the Sahara desert region of Illizi, was abducted Monday "by three young Algerians, who were armed and have been identified," the interior ministry said in a statement sent to the official APS news agency.

Khelfi is now in Libya and "the Libyans are expected to bring him to the Debdeb border post and hand him over to Algerian authorities today before sunset," the senator, Ibrahim Houma, told AFP.

Khelfi was able to contact his family by telephone on Monday but could not at the time reveal his location, officials said.

No group has claimed to be behind the kidnapping.

Houma said Khelfi had gone to the southeastern town of Debdeb on Monday to calm down a protest by youths.

They were protesting an Algerian court's handing a life sentence in absentia to Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, one of the most radical leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and implicated in the kidnappings of some 30 Westerners in 2003.