In his first interview since being released from 47 days of captivity, Noel Sciberras tells Mark Micallef the rescue team reached him just as he had lost all hope of ever making it out alive.

The day life turned upside down started out as the most mundane of Thursday mornings for Noel Sciberras. He woke up a little later than usual but still well in time to head to the office at around 8.15am, before most of Tripoli wakes up.

The streets were even sleepier than usual. Thursday is the end of the week in Muslim countries. There was hardly anyone about when he drove out of the villa complex where he lives in Janzour, not too far from Palm City, Corinthia’s luxury complex in the coastal town.

As soon as he drove down the main road, in the direction of Tripoli, not more than 50-60 metres from the residence gate, a parked white pick-up truck pulled up.

“I slowed down as you do when someone comes out of a parking space but as soon as I did, the car accelerated and in no time was blocking the road,” the 47-year-old says, his toughts going back to September 10.

Before he had time to process what was going on, four hooded men got out of the vehicle. One of them planted himself right in front of his car, pointing an AK-47 at his head, while the others rushed to the door on his side.

“They were so well trained that they looked like commandos to me,” Mr Sciberras said.

His door was locked but one of them forced his arm through a small opening in the window and unlocked it. He was dragged onto the street and made to kneel. At that point, they forced three balaclavas over his head, so he could not see anything. However, he said, “I could feel three pistols pressed against my head.”

His heart was racing and he was short of breath, but it all happened in the blink of an eye. They pulled him off the floor, shoved him into the rear seat of their car and raced off at breakneck speed.

“They spoke English, relatively well. I mean they didn’t say much but I could tell they could speak the language from their pronunciation. “Shut up,” they kept saying as he complained that he couldn’t breathe properly.

Eventually, one of them pulled the balaclavas away from his mouth and he could breathe better. The man on his right went through his pockets and fished out his house keys while the other took some money and his wrist watch.

“I can’t tell how long we were on the road at this point, but it didn’t feel like much. Eventually, the car stopped, they pulled him out of the vehicle and dragged him into a room, where he was made to kneel again.

“I did not spend more than 15 minutes in this place. I can’t tell for certain but I felt like there was a person sat right next to me and he told my captors they had got the right guy.”

They were on the road again, a short drive to a place that has now been identified as a workshop on the airport road, about five kilometres from the city centre.

Once there, they removed his clothes and he felt like he was being scanned, “not with a hand-held scanner but some sort of machine that was being moved up and down my body. I felt a sensation of heat at one point”.

I could feel three pistols pressed against my head

Later in the evening, he was interrogated and asked for his details, but one of the questions also indicated what they might have been looking for when they scanned him. “Do you have a tracking device in your body?” asked one of the men, who identified himself only as Mr David.

He did not know it then but he had landed in the hands of a kidnapping gang, the type that mushroomed across Libya after the 2011 revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi.

Libya’s chaotic revolution and its aftermath brought with it the mass release of hardened criminals serving time in prisons across the country just as the North African state was being flooded with all kinds of weapons. Most came from the regime’s vast caches while others were provided by states trying to curry favour in the new Libya by arming militias.

With the country’s reserves running dry and the economy crippled by the political crisis that has effectively split the country in two, some of the young men who took to the front lines to fight the regime turned to criminal activity to make money.

“This is not the Libya or the Libyans I know. Libyans are generous people. I used to think that if I kept a low profile and didn’t bother anyone, nobody would bother me. Boy was I wrong,” the father-of-two said.

He had been living in Tripoli for the past three years, running a multi-storey car park in the middle of the city’s business district, but his connection with Libya goes back almost 25 years.

After spending the night in the workshop where he was interrogated, the following morning they were on the road again. They woke him up early, shoved him in the boot of a car and sped off.

“They seemed to be going round in circles, going over sleeping policemen several times (probably so he could not work out where they were going). They stopped and sped off again a few times until finally reaching the destination where he was to spend the next 46 days.

He was given little explanation but was told he was in the hands of a Libyan intelligence agency and was being held because the Maltese government had arrested the head of a militia. “We know you are clean. When your government releases him (the militia leader), we will release you,” he was told.

“I felt that they were lying to me but had no way of knowing. At the same time, I took some comfort in the fact that they were saying they were a government body. I know it sounds foolish but I didn’t know what to think at the time.”

The alarm about his disappearance was raised very early on by friends who were in the habit of phoning Mr Sciberras frequently.

The call sprung into action the Maltese Security Service and the Foreign Affairs Ministry but also, crucially, a network of concerned Libyans, in the country and in Malta, who moved the concern up the priority list of the Tripoli government and its security service.

The Radda Al Haast, a special operations brigade that forms part of the Tripoli home affairs ministry and which eventually freed Mr Sciberras, moved on the case practically from day one.

The house he was kept in for the duration of his captivity was a typical suburban dwelling in a populated neighbourhood in Ain Zara, an area about 10km from downtown Tripoli.

He was locked up in a 10 square metre room throughout his stay, and was only allowed out to use the bathroom. “I was in the same clothes for practically the whole time.”

Other than that, they bought him medication which he takes regularly, but fed him bread and cheese practically throughout his entire stay there. A burly man, he went down from a 42-inch waist size to a much slimmer 35 inches during this time.

Two men would stay at the place, the same ones who can be seen on the video of the night of the raid released by the Radda Al Haast.

Practically every weekend, they would have a party at the place with prostitutes and lots of alcohol. On these days, he was told not to make a sound. “When I got four bits of cheese instead ofthe usual two and a bit more bread, it meant that they would have guests on the day, so I couldn’t make a sound.”

But the real killer was the uncertainty. He was rarely given information, and whenever he asked if there was any news on his release he was always given a different story: “In the next few days you will be free… next week… you should be out soon,” he kept being told.

I was praying for them to end it. I was hoping someone would walk in and shoot me elsewhere?

“I was going crazy. You keep thinking about your loved ones while simultaneously trying to block those thoughts out because there’s nothing you can really do for them, but you keep swinging between these thoughts, over and over again,” he recalled.

Towards the end, he started giving up. He was twice told to make a statement, asking the Maltese government to intervene, while his captors recorded it on a mobile phone.

“They recorded them on the 14th and 26th day. I was happy about it because it looked like there was some progress, but a week or so after the second video, I asked one of the captors if the leader of the militia had been released, and it was clear that he got confused. It was a lie, I was sure at that point.”

More days passed and nothing happened. “I was praying for them to end it at this point. I was hoping someone would walk in and shoot me,” he said. He even pulled out the cover of the only two electricity sockets in his room, as he toyed with the idea of taking matters into his own hands.

“I contemplated sticking my hand in but was worried that if it didn’t work, I could injure myself rather than end it and make matters worse.”

But around the same time, some works started on an adjacent house that was right next to the window of his room. “I could hear sounds and would slowly approach the window and throw bits of bread and small quantities of water out of the window to attract attention without making much noise”.

On the 45th day, he heard a man question where the water was coming from. “I finally got their attention. I started throwing more and he climbed on the roof of the building to check it out. I couldn’t believe it, he spotted me. I gestured with my hand to show him I was being held captive. He understood and we started communicating, whispering to each other. I asked him if he could make a phone call to a friend and explain where I was.”

He took the number, dialled it and said there was no coverage. “I didn’t know what to think at this point. Was he having second thoughts or did he ask me for the number to go tell my jailers? I lost all hope again and spent the most anxious 48 hours waiting to see if there would be any repercussions from that exchange,” he said.

But the man did not ignore the plea. He did not call the number but found a way to forward the information to authorities.

At this point, the Radda brigade had narrowed down their area of investigation to Ain Zara but they did not yet have a specific location.

They surveyed the place over several days and decided to attack the house.

The raid took place at 4.30am. “It was terrifying. There was a lot of shouting and shots were fired. “A bullet went through my wooden door and hit the wall. I didn’t know what to think. When they got into the house, I understood that someone was going through the rooms. They were shouting, ‘Is anyone here?’ But I didn’t make a sound, I didn’t know what to expect.

“Then they were outside my door, someone shouted ‘out! are you the Maltese?’. I kept silent but then they kicked the door in. I raised my hands and they said, ‘We’re here to rescue you, you are safe now’.”

The Radda brigade has a mixed reputation in Libya but Mr Sciberras has nothing but praise for them.

“What I can say is that these people risked their lives to save mine and others. I was with them for a week after my release, and could see that they handle cases like mine every day, freeing innocent people. I want to thank all those who worked for my release. I know there were many in Malta and Libya, but the image I have in my mind when I think of my freedom is of these men kicking down the door and telling me that I was safe. They are like my family now. I was born again, thanks to them.”

Mr Sciberras is now trying to leave it all behind. “I would like to stop having to tell this story because it brings back painful thoughts every time”

But a lingering thought remains on why this happened to him: “It’s clear that someone tipped off these people about my whereabouts. I have my suspicions, which I have shared with authorities but I don’t think I’ll ever know for certain.”