Édith Blais, a Canadian woman whose plight made the hearts of people across Quebec ache when she and her boyfriend disappeared 15 months ago in West Africa, will be returning home soon, according to Canada’s foreign affairs minister.
“I just spoke to Édith Blais and Italian Luca Tacchetto, who were kidnapped 15 months ago in Burkina Faso, are seen in Bamako, Mali on Friday. Preliminary Edith Blais and Luca Tacchetto. I can confirm they are safe,” Francois-Philippe Champagne tweeted on Saturday.
“We look forward to Édith returning home.”
A dream that turned into a nightmare in the late fall of 2018 appears to be finally over.
Blais and Tacchetto, who were kidnapped 15 months ago in Burkina Faso, are seen in Bamako, Mali on Friday. Preliminary reports indicated that the pair escaped their captors. (Olivier Salgado/UN via AP)
On Nov. 20 Blais, who is from Sherbrooke, QC, and Tacchetto, an Italian national, left the northern Italian town of Vigonza, outside Padua, in Tacchetto’s car, bound for Togo, where they planned to do volunteer work.
After making their way through France, Spain, Morocco, Mauritania and Mali, they arrived in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso’s southwest.
That’s where they were last seen–on Dec. 15, 2018–in a region plagued by kidnappings by al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
Last Friday, they reappeared.
Blais andTacchetto meet with Canada’s ambassador to Mali, Michael Elliott, after being found in Mali. Blais is expected to return to Canada shortly. (MINUSMA, the UN Mission in Mali)
Just how they recovered their freedom remains unclear.
A source told The Canadian Press’s Helen Moka that Blais, 35 and Tacchetto, 31, arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali, just before noon local time on Saturday after spending the night at a UN camp in Kidal, in the northeastern part of the country.
The source said the pair apparently fled their captors, hailed a private vehicle and asked to be taken to United Nations camp in the area.
Instead, according to Moka, they were dropped off at a UN checkpoint where soldiers with the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces in the area took them the rest of the way.
After spending the night at the camp, Moka writes, they were flown Bamako on Saturday.
Blais and Tacchetto’s disappearance in December 2015 touched people across Canada, especially in her native Quebec. (Facebook)
The happy ending is in sharp contrast with the story of another Canadian who disappeared in the region.
Barely over a month after Blais and Tacchetto disappeared, Kirk Woodman, who worked for a Vancouver-based mining company, was found dead in northern Burkino Faso near the border with Mali and Niger.
He had been shot multiple times.
With files from CBC (Derek Stoffel), Canadian Press (Helen Moka)
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