Somali pirates yesterday released seven Bangladeshi sailors, who were abducted from a Malaysian flag-carrying merchant ship on the high seas of the Indian Ocean nearly four years ago.
The released Bangladeshis were Golam Mostafa, Aminul Islam, Habibur Rahman, Zakir Hossain, Abul Quasem Sardar, Limon Sarker and Nurul Haque.
They were being flown to Kenya by a special aircraft of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Khorshed Alam, secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Maritime Affairs unit, told the Dhaka Tribune.
The UNODC authority and Bangladesh High Commission would receive the crew in Kenya’s capital Nairobi where they would undergo medical checkup at the Aga Khan Hospital, Nairobi, he said.
Nurul Islam, father of one of the hostages, Aminul Islam, told the Dhaka Tribune that the Kenyan Embassy in Dhaka contacted and informed him about the release of his son.
Bangladesh High Commission in Nairobi was already instructed to prepare their travel documents, a foreign ministry press release said.
As soon as the required formalities were completed by the UNODC, the Bangladesh High Commission in Nairobi would arrange for the seven crew to return to Bangladesh.
A gang of Somali pirates hijacked the Malaysian-flagged container ship, MV Albedo, from the Indian Ocean on November 26, 2010.
In a report, Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper however said six Bangladeshis, three Sri Lankans and an Iranian and an Indian were among the 11 crewmen released yesterday.
Terming this hostage one of the longest-running Somali piracy cases, it also said the crewmen were facing their first hours of freedom after three years and seven months as hostages, during which their pirate captors often used torture.
The men escaped with the help of some of their pirate captors in the early hours of Friday morning and fled to a nearby village where they were taken in by government-affiliated milita, the newspaper quoted a senior Somali anti-piracy official as saying.
“Few of them had shoes, some had only their underclothes, but they managed to escape through a window and reach a place of safety,” said Omar Sheikh Ali Osoble, counter-piracy focal point for the Galmudug regional administration.
“We collected them and put them in a nice hotel last night. They had air-conditioning and hot water, and all of them were so happy this morning. They were not in a bad condition, but they told us stories of their experiences which were terrible.
“Some of them were beaten very badly. Sometimes they were forced to call their people at home to say they needed money to be released, and they were close to dying, and they were beaten while they were on the telephone. All of them are so happy to be free.”
Early on in the hijacking, one crewman was shot dead by the pirates in an apparent fit of anger after negotiations with the ship’s owners broke down. Then last summer, the vessel sank in a storm, resulting in five of the crew drowning along with five of the pirates as they abandoned ship.
Due to lack of usual maintenance, MV Albedo sank on July 7 in 2013 and the abducted crew were shifted by the pirates to another hijacked fishing vessel.
The Telegraph also reports, the 11 seamen released were then transferred to a ramshackle house near the Somali port of Hobyo, a notorious pirate haven, where they have been held ever since. They were expected to be flown to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
“They have lost a lot of weight, but otherwise seem in reasonable health and in good spirits, which is remarkable considering what they been through,” said one source.
The Albedo, a Malaysian-flagged container ship, was originally captured in November 2010 with a crew of 23 from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Iran and Pakistan.
Rather than pay the $8 million ransom demanded by the pirates, the ship’s Iranian owners, who are thought to have been uninsured, simply went to ground, officials involved in the case told The Telegraph last year.
The Pakistani crew members were freed after a Pakistani businessman raised a $1.2 million ransom payment. But no similar funds were forthcoming for their fellow crew members, despite terrifying accounts emerging of the men’s mistreatment by their captors as they tried to raise the pressure.
Some of the seamen were beaten with gun butts, locked in containers, and had the skin of their palms torn with pliers. At one point, the entire crew were packed into an empty swimming pool without food or water for three days. The ship’s captain, Jawad Khan, bore the brunt of the hijackers’ anger as he tried to keep them calm. On one occasion, he was tied up and lowered into the sea as pirates sprayed bullets around him.
The international anti-piracy force that patrols the Indian Ocean was unable to attempt a rescue because it feared the hostages would almost certainly be killed if they attempted to do so.
The exact circumstances of the release of the final Albedo crewmen is unclear. However, it is thought that the pirates may have been persuaded to accept a much lower ransom than originally expected.
The ship was among the cases receiving assistance from Colonel John Steed, a former British military attache to Kenya and United Nation’s counter-piracy expert, who now runs the Secretariat for Regional Maritime Security, an organisation which specialises in dealing with Somalia’s “forgotten” piracy cases.
