British-led group secures release of ‘forgotten’ Iranian hostages

A BRITISH-LED mercy mission has helped secure the release of a group of Iranian sailors held hostage in the last and longest-running hijacking of the Somali piracy crisis.

Three crewmen from the Siraj, an Iranian fishing vessel hijacked off the Somali coast in March 2015, were freed last week after five and a half years in captivity. Their captors are said to have treated them “like goats” at times, feeding them only occasionally and not caring if they starved to death.

The deal to free the sailors – which included the payment of a $180,000 (£136,000) ransom – was brokered by the Hostage Support Partnership, a pro-bono group coordinated by John Steed, a retired British diplomat based in Kenya.

Since 2013, Mr Steed has helped to free the crews of three other hijacked ships, all of whom had been in captivity for at least three years. The ships’ owners were all uninsured, leaving them unable to pay the ransoms demanded by the pirates. Working with Leslie Edwards, a Uk-based hostage negotiation specialist, Mr Steed persuaded the pirates to accept a token “expenses” payment that was a fraction of the multimillion-dollar ransoms they originally sought. The money was usually sourced from well wishers within the international shipping industry.

In the latest case involving the Siraj, private Iranian donors raised and delivered the $180,000, but the deal itself – which included complex negotiations with the pirates and securing proof that the hostages were still alive – was brokered by Mr Steed’s team over the course of many months.

“This marks the end of an era of Somali piracy and the pain and suffering of Somalia’s forgotten hostages,” said Mr Steed. He and his team became involved in the negotiations for the Siraj after concluding that the ship’s owners, who were again believed to have been uninsured, were not going to be able to help.

While the work was done with help from a number of Iranian diplomats, it is understood that the case struggled to attract attention from the highest levels of the Iranian government.

Claims were made that the hostages were left in limbo because they were Baluchis, an ethnic minority in Iran.

The case will be seen as a rare example of British and Iranian co-operation on hostage affairs, despite the ongoing diplomatic tensions between London and Tehran. It contrasts with the case of Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe, the British-iranian citizen held for four years by Iran on spying charges.

A BBC Panorama programme aired this week alleged that Tehran was holding her “hostage” in the hope of securing payment of a £400 million debt owed to it by Britain from the Seventies.

‘This marks the end of an era of Somali piracy and the suffering of Somalia’s forgotten hostages’