IF IF IF American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen freed during Israel-Hamas ceasefire

Washington Post

15-02-2025

Sagui Dekel-Chen, an American Israeli dual national abducted by Hamas in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, was released on Saturday as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal, bringing to an end his 16 months in captivity.
Dekel-Chen, 36, is a father of three but has not met his youngest, as he was kidnapped when his wife was pregnant. His release follows a tense week during which Hamas said it would delay freeing hostages in response to alleged Israeli violations of the ceasefire and later reversed course.
Saturday's release also included Sasha Alexander Troufanov, 29, who holds Russian and Israeli citizenship; and Iair Horn, 46, who was born in Argentina. They were set to be exchanged for 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees being held by Israel, according to the Hamas-run Prisoners Media Office. Israel did not immediately confirm.
The agreement between Israel and Hamas, which began Jan. 19, involves a 42-day ceasefire in the first phase, during which 33 hostages, most of whom are presumed to be alive, are being released. Another American, Keith Siegel, 65, was freed Feb. 1, and there is now one remaining U.S. citizen held hostage, Edan Alexander, who was serving in the Israeli military and is not planned to be released in the first phase.
On the morning of his abduction, Dekel-Chen, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was at his workshop where he was working to convert a bus into a mobile classroom. His wife, Avital, who was then seven months pregnant, and their two young daughters survived by hiding in a safe room for nine harrowing hours.
His family was informed by hostages released in November 2023 that he was alive in Gaza but wounded. Avital gave birth to their third daughter two months after his kidnapping. She named the baby Shachar, which means dawn in Hebrew.
Dekel-Chen's father, Jonathan, originally from Connecticut, immigrated to Israel in the 1980s. Dekel-Chen spent four years in the United States, where he discovered a love of baseball, and later played on Israel's junior national team.
In an interview with Slate in 2023, his father said that Dekel-Chen loved life on Nir Oz and 'grew up in the agricultural machine shop, as my tagalong in the fields, supervising and servicing machinery.'
As an adult, he developed a passion for repurposing old buses into new spaces, including a mobile home and a grocery store. Avital, whom he met as a teenager, sometimes jokingly asked if he loved his buses more than her.
Speaking to the Times newspaper last month, his father stressed, 'There's no way for us to know if he's even aware that his wife and two, now three, daughters survived the massacre at Nir Oz,' adding, 'I think that alone must be torture.'
Sharing a poignant reflection on Instagram last year, Avital wrote that she sometimes doesn't recognize her own life when scrolling through photos on her phone. 'In all this chaos, I just want to see one thing,' she wrote, addressing Sagui: 'Your face.'
Karen DeYoung and Ellie Silverman contributed to this report.