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The son of 75-year-old hostage Ada Sagi has told BBC News how the wait for her release has been “psychological terror”.
We spoke to British-Israeli Noam Sagi again just before his mother and other hostages were handed over to the Red Cross on Tuesday evening.
He said he planned to give her the biggest hug and tell her “that we never stopped fighting to get her back”.
Noam has spoken extensively to the BBC over the last 53 days.
Before she was kidnapped, Ada, an Arabic speaker, had taught others Arabic so they could communicate with their Palestinian neighbours.
She was, her son said, a peace activist and part of a community who “fought all their lives for good neighbouring relationships.” Ada was due to visit London for her 75th birthday the week after she was kidnapped.
I met Noam at his home in north London two days after his mum was taken from her home in the kibbutz of Nir Oz, near Israel’s border with Gaza. He played us a video filmed by Hamas that showed the gunmen on the grass outside his mum’s house and her car on fire.
He has met the UK prime minister, MPs, talked at rallies, spoken to diplomats and the Red Cross to try and get his mum released.
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Noam called me on Tuesday morning to tell me she was on the list of those due to be released.
He said: “My heart just expanded beyond belief for the last 53 days to contain the pain.
“It’s actually the first time this big bleeding heart is excited. It’s a bit unreal for now. We’re shaking.”
We spoke to him again just before the hostages were handed over to the Red Cross.
He said: “We are just going to give her the biggest, loving, squashy hug possible, just to connect and remind her that we were never ever going to abandon her, that we never ever stopped fighting to get her back.
“She needs to feel that in every fibre of her body. But she doesn’t know that she has no home to come back to. She doesn’t know how many friends she’s lost.
“So there is a long process of physical and emotional recovery but the most important thing is to feel that we are united and we are here for her.”
Through all of this he has tried to stay positive but he said waiting to see if her name was on the list to be released has been like “Russian roulette to the heart.”
He said: “We are in the midst of psychological terror. Every night waiting like a leaf for a list.. Are we in? Are we out? It’s been excruciatingly painful.”
Ada, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, lost her husband last year. Now she has faced this unimaginable trauma.
While some tore down the posters of the kidnapped from walls in the UK he said he was talking to the lampposts that had the pictures of his mum on.
“Your face is on so many, that is where I get the most comfort”, he said.
But Noam, finally, has got his mum back.
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