Last night I was minding my own business driving through town after having taken some cash from the ATM machine, my phone was bleeping as usual with WhatsApp messages. I stopped briefly to buy a few bits from a Mauritanian corner shop and noticed my Swedish journalist friend had sent me some photos (of documents) with a message 'Is this your Italian?'
I glanced at the document whilst getting back into the car, tired and wondering about which Italian friend in the cryptic message. Then the name 'Nicola' jumped out at me, I pulled the car over admist angry taxi drivers hooting and read it a bit more closely. I also saw Sophie Petronin's name, a name I remember well, she was kidnapped from Gao whilst I was in Nouakchott, 24th December 2016 about to take the Route d'Espoir to Mali in a previous blog
Going back to February 2019 someone contacted me as the founder of the social media group 'West Africa Travellers' to ask if I had an Italian cyclist in the group or in our WhatsApp group. Not to my knowledge but I asked in the group to check. I was then told this tricycle riding Italian had gone AWOL a day or so before. Not of great concern, when travelling that slowly you can find yourself out of mobile phone range, until I was informed he had been last heard of in Douentza, Mali. This started ringing alarm bells being in a jihadi area and on a tricycle as a European he would stick out like a sore thumb.
I started making enquiries via various friends and contacts in Mali and with security people in the sub-region to ask what had been heard. In most cases no one realised he was missing! Nothing! I then asked a friend to call Douentza, we knew that the Gendarmerie had picked him up and given him a cell on the night of 2/3rd February but then bizarrely let him loose when a month or two before a Japanese tourist found on a barge at Mopti heading for Timbuktu had been hastily taken back to Bamako! The night of 3rd February I had it confirmed by friends he had stayed at the campsite in Douentza.
Last known online time was at 0906 local on 4th February, other travellers started sending me screenshots of their conversations with him. No one had a time after that. I was spending hours translating Italian so I could understand some of his conversations with his Italian childhood friend who made contact with me, I'll call the friend 'P' for now. Nicola had taken a screenshot of a map and said he was going up the road to Timbuktu, a road so dangerous not even my Malian friend in telecoms will attempt. There was also a message to another traveller that he was possibly looking to go to Timbuktu via the main road at Konna. It looked bleak for him either way. P had no knowledge of West Africa but was in touch with Nicola's wife and son in South America as well as his mother in Italy. We worked through many theories which the family were told about. The Italian government wanted his disappearance to be kept quiet, the family wanted this respected, hence my journalist friend knew only that I knew of a missing Italian when some of the story broke this year!
I called an aviation friend in the UN who put me in touch with the then Italian commander in Timbuktu who know of Nicola's case but was as lost as the rest of us as to his whereabouts. No one had heard on the grapevine if he'd been kidnapped, which at that time was his best option. The alternative didn't bear thinking about.
The months dragged on and on, P was occasionally in touch asking if I'd heard more, he would find things online and share them with me, but never a sighting of Nicola. April 2020, P was suddenly in touch with this one day, I was elated as I'm sure he was! But this was the only update we had, 6th April 2020 Info Air Agadez with video footage taken around Kidal.
We presume these photos were taken near Kidal around the same time, where we can see some of the other hostages including Sophie Petronin.
So after hurriedly looking at documents last night I called P in Italy, forgetting his written English is incredible but he finds it difficult to speak. He answered and I was screaming down the phone to him 'Do you have the documents of Nicola's release?' he didn't understand but could hear how excited I was. We hung up, I drove like a mad woman another kilometre up the road urgently wanting to send the documents from the Malian government in French to him. We were then both confused, it was 8th October 2020 last night, the document was giving the order for Nicola and Padre Luigi to be released on 6th October, so where were they?! More calls to an EU security advisor who's attached to an Embassy in the sub-region. He knew about the Franco-Swiss lady Sophie Petronin's release but was surprised when I told him Nicola was being released too in the deal. Even more surprising, P broke the news to Nicola's wife who also had no idea of the news!
After an hour of making a variety of calls to check if this was really true, we got word that an aircraft had landed in Bamako with the 4 hostages on board. Absolutely elated I received video of Petronin, Cissé and one other disembarking, both P and I believed this 3rd one was indeed Nicola.
This morning I received a photo from P, probably taken last night of Nicola in Bamako.
Unsure of the time he left Bamako on Friday 9th October 2020 but with Padre Luigi, they landed safely in Rome's Ciampino Airport around 1400h to be greeted by the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Italy. Awful to have come out of captivity for so long and find they must wear masks now ... the world has changed!
