Pirates hold British couple for ransom
NAIROBI - Somali pirates said yesterday that they had moved a British couple seized from their sailboat last week to a container ship anchored off Somalia’s lawless shores and that the pirates would “protect’’ the British captives until a ransom was delivered.
“We have the British couple, and they are safe,’’ said Farah Abdi, a member of the gang that said it hijacked the couple. He spoke by mobile phone from the pirate stronghold of Xarardheere, on the central Somali coast. “They are really very tired; we will give them rest.’’
British ITV News said it had made contact with Paul Chandler, one of the kidnapped. In a brief interview, Chandler described how he and his wife, Rachel, had been taken captive Oct. 23 as they sailed near the Seychelles islands. “I was off watch,’’ he told the station, according to a transcript of the interview. “I was asleep and men with guns came aboard.’’
Chandler, reached by mobile phone, told the station he and his wife were being held in the captain’s quarters of the Kota Wajar, a Singaporean ship seized by pirates in mid-October and that the ship was anchored about a mile off the Somali coast. He said that the pirates had not demanded a ransom but that “they kept asking for money and took everything of value on the boat.’’
The interview cut out abruptly after Paul Chandler was asked how the couple was being treated. Christine Collett, Rachel Chandler’s sister-in-law, said in an interview that the family was relieved to hear evidence that the Chandlers were alive and apparently unharmed.
She said family members were now waiting to hear from the captors, and she emphasized that the Chandlers were not wealthy.
