The families of Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed welcomed their loved ones home Saturday after both men spent a decade languishing in Hamas captivity. Their families expressed concern for the former hostages’ well-being and frustration that their release took so long.

Mengistu and al-Sayed were released as part of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. They were freed alongside Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Eliya Cohen and Tal Shoham, all of whom were abducted on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.

Mengistu and al-Sayed entered the Gaza Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015, respectively, amid mental distress. Reports following the October 7, 2023, massacre indicated that Hamas had lulled Israel into complacency by feigning serious interest in a deal for Mengistu and al-Sayed.

Mengistu was released along with Shoham from Rafah Saturday morning, while al-Sayed was set free in Gaza City shortly after the noon release of Wenkert, Shem Tov and Cohen in Nuseirat.

Mengistu, then 28, entered Gaza from the Zikim beach in September 2014. His family had not heard from him since his abduction until a Hamas video purporting to show him alive in early 2023. He spent 3,821 days in captivity.

In a statement via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the family said it had endured “ten years and five months of unimaginable suffering” until the 38-year-old was released Saturday.

“During this time, there have been continuous efforts to secure his return, with prayers and pleas, some silent, that remained unanswered until today,” said the family.

As “our beloved son, brother and uncle Avera” returns, “we ask that these moments be respected and that we be granted the peace and rest we so desperately need,” the family said.

Photos released showed Mengistu reuniting and embracing family members at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

Gil Elias, a relative of Mengistu and longtime activist for his release, told Channel 12 that Mengistu’s brother Ilan and sister would greet him in Israel. Mengistu’s parents, who are observant, would not be at the border crossing due to Shabbat, he said.

The siblings were waiting with “mixed feelings,” said Elias, who was watching the release at a gathering of supporters in Ashkelon.

“It’s hard to process that they’re going to see him after 10 years,” he says. “It’s really a miracle… somehow the stars have aligned and he’s coming home.”

“The first thing I’ll say to him is, ‘We’ve waited for you too long, I’m sorry,’” Elias told the Walla news site.

Singer Sim Mekonen, at the supporters’ gathering in Ashkelon, told Channel 13 she had prepared a “happy song,” making good on a years-old promise to Ilan Mengistu that she would do so the day his brother was released.

Mengistu hails from Ashkelon’s working-class Ethiopian-Israeli community. According to his family, he has suffered from poor mental health and was exempted from military service.

Mengistu’s family has struggled over the years to rally public support or pressure the government to negotiate his release, with some relatives alleging racism and contrasting his plight with that of soldier Gilad Shalit, a cause celebre who was freed in 2011 in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian inmates.

Al-Sayed, then 28, entered Gaza near the Erez Crossing in April 2015. According to his father, that was not his first visit to the Strip. He was in captivity for 3,596 days.

Like Mengistu, al-Sayed suffered from mental illness, though he briefly served in the military before being discharged. Al-Sayed was not heard from until 2022, when Hamas released a video showing him looking sick and depleted in a bed and hooked up to an oxygen tank.

In a statement via the Families Forum, al-Sayed’s family said they were “moved by Hisham’s return home.”

“After nearly a decade of fighting for Hisham’s return, the long-awaited moment has arrived,” said the family. “We thank all the people of Israel who stood with and beside us throughout the years. Special thanks to the families of the hostages and the forum who embraced us and saw us as a natural part of the struggle to bring everyone home.”

Asking for privacy, the family urged “the continuation of the framework that will bring the hostages home — the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for proper burial in Israel.”

Al-Sayed’s father Shaaban told Channel 12 that “these are difficult hours. I’ll tell him about the other hostages — he may not know.” The father also offered condolences to the Bibas family following the return of the bodies of mother Shiri and her young sons Ariel and Kfir this week.

Al-Sayed hails from the Bedouin town of Hura in the Negev. Upon his release, Hamas did not hold a propaganda handover ceremony as it had done with other hostages.

Al-Jazeera cited an official from the terror group as saying the move was “out of respect for [al-Sayed’s] Palestinian roots” — despite having held him for nearly a decade, and having killed and kidnapped several Arabs on October 7, 2023.

Ynet cited al-Sayed’s relatives as rejecting Hamas’s argument.

“They should have released him in a ceremony, like [they did] the Jews, without distinction. It makes us feel as though he’s special and better than the rest. For us, every hostage is important, whether Jewish or Arab,” said one relative cited by the news site.

Another relative was said to add: “There is no respect here. Everyone knows he was detained and everything he went through.”

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.