The victims were on their way to participate in a conference held in the Malian capital, Bamako, before their car was intercepted by the border guards in the Malian city of Jino.

Emilio Gino Segrè (1 February 1905 22 April 1989) was an Italian physicist and Nobel laureate who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a sub atomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959.