On the night between 26 and 27 October, on a farm in Massalata, a Nigerian town located in the Tahoua region (Niger), not far from the border with Nigeria, a group of six people, armed with Ak-47 rifles, Philip Walton, an American citizen, was kidnapped.
According to the local governor, Abdourahamane Moussa, the group initially asked him for money but since he was able to offer only 20.000 CFA francs (a currency imposed in the Sahel by Paris) which is equivalent to about 30 euros for his release, they took him away.
Obviously, the alarm went off immediately, the Nigerian security forces launched in pursuit of the group, unfortunately they were unable to reach them.
Very often it happens that these groups of common criminals, depending on the symbolic "value" of the kidnapped people, then give them for money to terrorist groups belonging to the jihadist movement, such as Boko Haram or ISWAP (Province of the Islamic State in West Africa) in Nigeria .
That is why, the US State Department alerted the services in the area to be able to locate the hostage before it was handed over to a jihadist group.
On October 31, Jonathan Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesperson, announced that a rescue operation of an American citizen had been carried out in northern Nigeria.
According to the official statement from the State Department, agents of the local branch of the CIA identified the place where Walton was imprisoned, subsequently the SEAL operators of the DEVGRU (formerly Team Six) who freed the hostage.
Operations of this kind always involve high risks for the hostage, in addition of course to the possibility of unforeseen events, as happened, in May 2019, for the French special forces, in Gorom Gorom, Burkina Faso (who left to free two hostages French, the COS raiders found four, although they managed to eliminate four of the six kidnappers, two of the hostages, the masters Cédric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello, were unfortunately killed).
The SEAL operation started from the US Navy naval base in Rota, Spain. American operators boarded a CV-22B tiltrotor Osprey, in-flight refueling was ensured by a KC-135R, with P-8A support aircraft Poseidon and MC-130J, while air support was provided by an AC-130J flying gunship ghostrider.
According to the ABC News the kidnappers did not realize what was happening to them: five of them were eliminated immediately, a sixth seems to have managed to escape.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the success of this operation, recalling that US policy aims to work in favor of the "safe return of all captured American citizens". He then added: "We have kept this commitment in Nigeria, where some of our bravest and most skilled soldiers rescued an American citizen after gunmen took him hostage across the border in Niger".
Washington's message is clear: no American citizen will be abandoned anywhere in the world.
In Italy, however, news of the 18 seafarers kidnapped by Haftar's militias two months ago is still awaited.
On 1 September the destroyer Luigi Durand de la Penne it was within a few dozen miles of the two fishing boats. From the COC they saw the patrol boat leaving Benghazi and asked for instructions from the CINCNAV in Rome. On board the fighter there was an SH-90 helicopter armed with 134x7,62 mm M-51D machine guns which, in a few tens of minutes, could have intervened. However, time was wasted from Rome, no one wanted to make a decision. In the end, the Sicilian fishermen were kidnapped in the guilty silence of the Navy.
At this point, Rome's message to Italian citizens is equally clear: if you are kidnapped, recommend yourself to some saint.
Photo: US Army / Navy
