An elderly French aid worker and a top Malian politician on Thursday landed in Bamako to an emotional reunion with their loved ones after being released from captivity by militants.
Mali had earlier announced the release of Frenchwoman Sophie Petronin, 75, and Malian politician Soumaila Cisse, alongside two Italians.
French President Emmanuel Macron voiced “immense relief” at the release of Petronin, and wrote on Twitter that he would welcome her back to France.
Photo: AFP
Footage shared on social media showed a frail, white-robed Petronin — who was the last French citizen held hostage in the world — descending from a plane, to an emotional greeting from her son.
Cisse, 70, followed her and was also embraced by loved ones.
In his post, Macron also expressed continued support for Mali in its fight against an insurgency.
News of the hostages’ release came after the Malian government released more than 100 prisoners last weekend, which sparked immediate speculation of a prisoner swap for Petronin and Cisse.
In an unexpected development, the office of Acting Malian Prime Minister Moctar Ouane announced that two Italians — Nicola Chiacchio and Pier Luigi Maccalli — had also been freed.
It was not immediately clear whether the two had arrived in Bamako on the same flight.
Petronin was abducted by gunmen on Dec. 24, 2016, in the northern city of Gao, where she worked for a children’s charity.
Cisse, a 70-year-old former opposition leader and three-time Malian presidential candidate, was kidnapped on March 25 while campaigning in his home region of Niafounke ahead of parliamentary elections.
Maccalli, a priest, was abducted in neighboring Niger in 2018. Chiacchio went missing in northern Mali last year while on a solo bicycle trip, Italian media reported.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Minister of Defense Lorenzo Guerini and Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio all hailed the release of the Italians, who Di Maio said were well.
Conte also thanked the Italian intelligence services and foreign ministry.
The Malian government gave no indication of the circumstances of the hostages’ release, nor did it provide information on their health.
There had been concerns about Petronin’s welfare while she was in captivity. She had appeared in two videos broadcast by the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM).
The last video in 2018 showed her looking emaciated and fatigued, and triggered alarm among her family members, who pressured Macron to negotiate with her captors.
Macron several times said that his government was working “tirelessly” for her release.
“To her family, to her loved ones, I send a message of sympathy,” Macron wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “To the Malian authorities, thank you. The fight against terrorism in the Sahel continues”
Mali’s former colonial power France has 5,100 troops deployed across the Sahel as part of its Operation Barkhane.
After first emerging in northern Mali in 2012, a brutal insurgency has spread to the center of the nation, as well as Burkina Faso and Niger.
Thousands of troops and civilians have died in the conflict, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Kidnappings are common.
One of the hostage negotiators, who requested anonymity, said that the talks remained difficult up to the end.
Mali released more than 100 prisoners to the volatile center of the nation last weekend, and in the northern town of Tessalit, a security official said earlier this week.
The rare mass release sparked immediate speculation on social media of an exchange.
Both the Malian and French governments declined to comment in the days following the mass release.
However, there had been little or no speculation about the release of the Italian hostages, whose freedom came as a surprise.
The prisoner release came with an interim government due to govern Mali for the next 18 months before staging elections after a military junta overthrew Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August.
The kidnapping of former opposition leader Cisse was one of the factors that fueled popular protests which led to the ouster of Keita over his perceived inability to crush the insurgency.
The intermediary involved in the negotiations on Thursday said that releasing the prisoners was necessary.
“Yes, terrorists were released,” he said. “We had to obtain the release.”
Several other hostages remain detained by militant groups in the Sahel.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS