How Eleven Hostages Escaped Captors in the Night Rain

A visual reconstruction of the escape of 11 sailors who fled captivity in Somalia after nearly four years with Somali pirates. (Digital Illustration: GoBeyondLocal)

How Eleven Hostages Escaped Captors in the Night Rain

The window was the way out.

In the early hours of a Friday morning in June 2014, 11 sailors slipped through it and ran into the darkness. Some had few clothes. Some had no shoes. They had been held by Somali pirates for almost four years.

They did not know how far they would have to run before reaching people who could protect them.

The men had once been part of the crew of the Malaysian-flagged cargo ship MV Albedo. The vessel was hijacked on November 26, 2010, after leaving Jebel Ali in Dubai for Kenya.

There had been 23 crew members aboard. The sailors came from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Iran.

Seven Pakistani crew members were freed in 2012 after their families raised part of a ransom demanded by the pirates. The other sailors were still being held when the ship sank in July 2013.

Four Sri Lankan crew members were reported missing after the sinking. The 11 men who survived were taken ashore, where their captivity continued.

By the time they reached the final weeks of captivity, the men had spent more than three years under the control of the pirates. One Indian sailor had been shot during the early period of the hijacking. Accounts from the men also described beatings and torture.

Mohammed Bisthamy, one of the sailors, later described being beaten with wooden and metal rods.

There was another problem inside the pirate group. The men holding the sailors were no longer united over what should happen to their captives.

One faction wanted more money from the families. Another had secretly accepted a smaller payment arranged through the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Programme, a charity-backed effort that had been trying to secure the sailors' freedom.

The money was far below the amount originally demanded. Peter Swift, chairman of the humanitarian programme, said the funds had come from donors after negotiators argued that the families had little money and the ship owner had abandoned the vessel.

The agreement did more than settle a payment. A faction within the pirate group helped the sailors get out.

In the early hours of Friday morning, the 11 men broke a window in the cramped room where they were being held. They climbed through and fled.

The men had been told that further torture could begin again the following Tuesday. For some of them, even running without proper clothes or shoes offered a better chance than waiting for that day to arrive.

They ran through the darkness for more than 10 kilometres. Low bushes gave them places to move out of sight as they tried to avoid being caught again.

One sailor was already weak and had little energy, according to his daughter, but he ran with the others until they reached protection.

The group eventually reached a convoy in Galmudug, a semi-autonomous region of central Somalia. People there took them in and placed them under protection.

Omar Sheikh Ali Osoble, the counter-piracy focal point for the Galmudug regional administration, said the men were collected and taken to a hotel.

For the first time in years, they had air conditioning and hot water. The men had escaped the room where they were being held, crossed the darkness outside and reached a place where they could sleep without the pirates controlling the door.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime later took responsibility for their onward movement. The 11 sailors were flown to Kenya, where their release brought the remaining crew of the MV Albedo out of captivity.