A British-South African man who has been held hostage by al-Qaeda in Mali for the past six years has been released and is on his way home.
Stephen McGowan, 42, was undergoing medical check ups before being reunited with his family in South Africa, the country’s foreign minister said.
Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said Mr McGowan appeared to be in good health but a check up was necessary given his lengthy time in captivity.
Mr McGowan is the last of three hostages taken together from a hotel in Timbuktu in 2011.
Johan Gustafsson, a 42-year-old Swede, was released in June while a Dutchman, Sjaak Rijke, was freed during a raid in 2015.
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Mr McGowan, who holds dual nationality, is a banker who had spent several years living in Putney, west London, with his wife Catherine, while working for Investec.
The couple were moving back to South Africa and she had flown ahead while he undertook a motorcycle tour through Europe and Africa to join her.
Mediators had negotiated for his release for several years on the grounds that his mother Beverly had died since he had been captured.
He was most recently seen in a video released in July by the al-Qaeda-linked group Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen in a group of six foreign hostages from Australia, Romania, Switzerland, Colombia and France.
At one stage, his captors offered to release him in return for the freedom of the radical cleric Abu Qatada, who was then in British custody awaiting extradition to Jordan. Qatada is now free, having been cleared of terrorist charges.