TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — One of the last Arab men still living in the city of Timbuktu was seen being taken away Thursday by soldiers, who arrested him hours after he gave an interview to a political scientist. Acquaintances and witnesses say the elderly man’s hands were bound and he was trembling when he was shoved into the back of a pickup truck.

The arrest of 70-year-old Ali Ould Mohamed Kalbali comes as refugee camps in neighboring Algeria and Mauritania are ballooning with Mali’s Arab and Tuareg families, minorities who are afraid of reprisals because they are accused of having aided the al-Qaida-linked rebels who overran Mali’s north last year.