Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda have freed a South African paramedic who was taken hostage in Libya more than six years ago, a charity said.
Gift of the Givers said it facilitated the “unconditional” release of Gerco van Deventer.
The charity described Van Deventer as the longest-serving South African hostage.
He was captured by an unnamed group in Libya in 2017, sold to Islamist militants in Mali a year later and released “in” Algeria, he added.
A Malian security source confirmed to the AFP news agency that Van Devender, 48, had been released.
It cites a humanitarian source as saying the paramedic was released at the border between Mali and Algeria.
Large parts of Libya have been lawless since Nato-backed forces toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, while Mali is battling an Islamist insurgency and an insurgency by separatist forces in the north.
Gift of the Givers, a South African-based charity, said Algerian security services took Van Deventer to hospital for a check-up after his release.
“We await the next step in his health and arrangements to bring him home to be reunited with his wife Shereen and son Asher. It has been six painful years of prayer, patience and hope.” the charity said in a Facebook post.
Van Deventer was an emergency medic working for a security company when he was arrested on November 3, 2017, while on his way to a power generation site about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
Three Turkish engineers kidnapped with him were released about seven months later, but he remained a prisoner.
In March his family made a new appeal for his release.
Gift of the Givers has participated in previous efforts to free Van Deventer and other hostages held in the Sahel region.
The charity said al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin had demanded a $3m (£2.4m) ransom in 2018 and the charity negotiated the amount down to $500,000.
However, Van Deventer’s family and employer could not afford the amount and the militants finally released him “unconditionally” on Saturday, he added.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other extremist groups in North and West Africa have long used kidnapping for ransom as a way to raise money.
The group, which has its roots in Algeria’s brutal civil war in the 1990s, is active in the Sahel region south of the Sahara desert and inside Mali and Burkina Faso.
In 2013, former colonial power France sent 5,000 troops to Mali to fight the group and its allies, and in 2020 killed AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel.
But France pulled out last year after a coup in the West African nation and growing unpopularity over its military operation.
Now Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group has been hired by Mali’s military junta to fight the militants.