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Other questions in this series can be found here.
My European friend, Johannes, now living in another country. He left a code like this:
OBA, OTI, SAC, ATR, NAR, DAD, IBA, AHO, TIA, HDA
5CA7CO
Where is he now?
Hint 1:
The list has 16 codes, those are members of an organisation.
Hint 2:
Petroleum
New answer:
The codes are the last three letters of the memebers of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) captial cities.
From left to right you have Malabo, Quito, Caracas, Jakarta, Tehran, Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait City, Riyadh.
5CA7CO
The second part, if you take the first letter from capital cities number 5 and 7 on the list and replace the numbers with those letters you have TCAACO which is an anagram for Catoca, a diamond mine in Angola which also happens to be a part of the OPEC. So I would say your friend is in Angola.
Op's intented answer
The op said the code means 5 letters for the capitals and 7 for the country and so I figure this hints at Abuja in Nigeria since this is missing from the list.
I think your friend Johannes is in
Manama, Bahrain
If we try to make sense of each of the 3-letter strings we see that
the only strings that do make sense are the last 6 ones. They are TEHRAN, BAGHDAD, ABU DHABI, DOHA, KUWAIT, RIYADH. If we read these capital cities last three letter backwards we get the strings on the list. The other strings OBA, OTI, SAC, ATR I couldn't make sense of I believe are simply just there to confuse.
Lastely
The thing all these capital cities respective country have in common is that they are all countries boardering the persian gulf. So the only capital city missing here is Manama which is in Bahrain.
Note
The second clue refers to 5 capitals and 7 countries who boarder the persian gulf. These are Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, Kuwait and Dubai (since it's capital of Emirate of Dubai). The countries are Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates. And even though Oman is said to boarder the gulf too I think the most fitting is Bahrain since it's more obvious when looking at the map.
