One of the 26 sailors held hostage by Somali pirates for more than four years has spoken of the dire conditions they endured.
Arnel Balbero told the BBC the group were forced to eat anything they could get their hands on, including rats, and were given tiny amounts of water. “Eat anything, even you not like, you feel hungry, you eat it,” he said. “You eat rat, you cook it.”
One crew member died when FV Naham 3, a Taiwan-owned fishing vessel, was seized in March 2012 south of the Seychelles.
The remaining crew – from Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, China and the Philippines – were held by the pirates until being freed on Saturday. The pirate representative Bile Hussein said a $1.5m (£1.2m) ransom was paid for the sailors’ release. The claim could not be independently verified.
International mediators said the release meant no more seafarers taken hostage at the height of Somali piracy were still in captivity.
The 26 sailors will be repatriated to their home countries, said John Steed, the coordinator of the Hostage Support Partnership for US-based organisation Oceans Beyond Piracy.
Steed said only one other group of hostages had been held longer than the FV Naham 3 crew, who spent 1,672 days in captivity.
“They are reported to be in reasonable condition, considering their ordeal … They have spent more than four-and-a-half years in deplorable conditions away from their families,” Steed said.
He said two crew members died from illnesses in captivity.
Balbero, speaking in Nairobi, said his time as a hostage had left him feeling like the “walking dead” and it was very hard to imagine restarting his life. The pirates treated the group like animals, he added.
Piracy off Somalia’s coast was once a serious threat to the global shipping industry, but attacks have dropped dramatically in recent years after vessels began carrying armed guards and EU naval forces increased patrols.
No commercial ship has been successfully attacked since 2012, but the threat of piracy remains, Steed said.
The majority of hostages held by Somali pirates have been sailors on merchant ships, although European families have been kidnapped from yachts while travelling in coastal waters of the Indian Ocean.
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