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1. For 5+ years, @adamgoldmanNYT and I were privy to a terrible secret: Louisa Akavi, a nurse from New Zealand had been kidnapped by ISIS. Her employer asked us not to publish her name for fear it could endanger her. Finally we can share her story: nytimes.com/2019/04/14/wor…
2. Louisa, according to her colleagues, is a “force of nature.” She was kidnapped in 2013 and early on was held in the same cell as American aid worker Kayla Mueller, and next door to James Foley, John Cantlie and the other Western men: nytimes.com/2014/10/26/wor…
3. ISIS asked for -€1 million then the ransom shot up to €20 million, before dropping to €5 million. Unlike European governments, the Red Cross has a strict, no-ransom policy. By late 2014, ISIS cut off contact. What’s amazing is there’s proof she may be alive (More soon...)
4. (Intermission over) At first, the Red Cross was skeptical. Were they really talking to her captors? But the following data points allowed them to put it together: Louisa & her six co-workers were stopped by gunmen at a checkpoint en route from Idlib to Damascus. Who were they?
5. Days later, a school near the checkpoint was painted with the ISIS flag. Negotiations for her release began. But the Red Cross only confirmed that her captors were ISIS in 2014, when the group began releasing other Western hostages held alongside her: nytimes.com/interactive/20…
6. The hostages - 23 Western prisoners from 12 countries - were held at an oil installation near Raqqa with women in one cell & men in adjacent one. In fall of 2014, two Yazidi girls were brought into the women’s cell. Both escaped and spoke to me. Both confirmed seeing Louisa.
7. Sometime before October 2014, guards came for the Yazidi girls & for Kayla Mueller. They were all taken away to be raped by Baghdadi. That was the last sighting of Louisa for a long time. She was left behind, apparently spared because of her age: nytimes.com/2015/08/15/wor…
8. By then, @ICRC had received a video of Louisa, so they knew for sure she was in ISIS’ clutch. She looked very tired but not injured or ill. However, both Yazidi girls told me that Louisa was sick. She spent most of the day lying down in their shared cell. From Getty: 
9. Starting in late 2014, the trail goes cold. ISIS sent a menacing message stating they planned to kill her and Kayla Mueller within 30 days in retaliation for an American raid to try to save the hostages. But soon they cut off contact. There is no news of her for all of 2015.
10. Her colleagues never gave up looking for her and @ICRC created a multi-country team to search for her staffed at all times by at least 15 people. Then in 2016, some hopeful news: Escapees from Abu Kamal in northern Syria reported seeing a woman that matched her description.
11. @adamgoldmanNYT and I began hearing rumblings from US officials that she was alive. It seemed too good to be true. Then in 2017, there was a breakthrough: IDPs from ISIS territory emerged and told the Red Cross that they had seen her working as a nurse in ISIS-run clinics.
12. Yves Daccord, the director general of the Red Cross told Adam and I that escapees have seen her in Mayadeen, in Raqqa and most recently in December 2018 in Susah, one of the last villages under ISIS rule.
13. I spent much of the month of February in Syria. I drove through Susah and interviewed ISIS followers who streamed out of the last pocket of ISIS rule there. Tens of thousands of ISIS wives and kids have been taken to al-Hol camp, where ISIS vigilantes patrol the rows of tents
14. Among the people I interviewed is a Yazidi woman kidnapped 5 yrs ago. She arrived at Hol wearing the full burkha. And she was too afraid to take it off. The only reason she was identified as a victim of ISIS, instead of as part of ISIS, is because a camp official noticed her
15. The reason the Red Cross is finally going public now, 5+ yrs since Louisa was abducted, is because ISIS’ territory in Syria is gone and they know she was inside it as recently as Dec. They fear she’s lost & want the public’s help to find her. One place she could be? Hol camp:
16. The director general of @ICRC told @adamgoldmanNYT and I that they fear Louisa may be in Hol camp, which now has 70,000+ people, nearly all of them supporters of ISIS. They worry she is under pressure from the terrorist group, unable to come forward for fear of repercussions.
17. So last month, the @ICRC sent its president to Syria to visit Hol. One of his duties was to raise the Red Cross flag high among the tents, so that if she is there she can see it, and use it as a beacon. I sure hope she comes home soon.
