Somali pirates free last of 736 hostages from maritime ‘war zone’
SOMALIA: Somali pirates have released 26 merchant seamen known as the ‘‘forgotten hostages’’ after they were captured nearly five years ago.
The Asian crew of the Naham 3 were the last group of hostages held by the pirate gangs who terrorised the Indian Ocean from 2005 to 2012.
‘‘The release of the Naham 3 crew represents the end of captivity for the last remaining seafarers taken hostage during the height of Somali piracy,’’ said John Steed, a former British army colonel who had made it his mission to get all of the hostages out of captivity.
‘‘They have spent over four and a half years in deplorable conditions away from their families,’’ he added.
Bile Hussein, a spokesman for the pirate gang, said the negotiators paid a US$1.5 million (NZ$2.1m) ransom.
Pirates armed with grappling hooks and Kalashnikov firearms seized the Naham 3 near the Seychelles, more than 1300 kilometres from where the boat was eventually beached on the coast of Somalia’s Puntland state.
One of the crew members was killed during the kidnapping. Two died of disease, and the rest were held in ‘‘squalid conditions’’, according to the campaign group Oceans Beyond Piracy. The Omani-flagged vessel sank a year later and the 26 surviving crew were moved on shore.
Steed said they were from poor families, who could not pay ransoms, in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
He declined to comment on the details of the deal to free them but said negotiations, involving community, tribal and religious leaders, took 18 months.
Steed added that the road to freedom was filled with peril and ‘‘heroism’’. They were released to Galkayo, the capital of Puntland on Sunday and arrived in Nairobi yesterday.
At one point the gangs held at least 32 ships with 736 hostages. They were paid ransoms of US$53m a year, according to the World Bank, and triggered a multibillion-dollar industry, with armed private security guards being posted on boats.
Container boats incurred huge costs by sailing faster through vast tracts of seas, which Lloyd’s insurers described as a war zone. The Times