A retired British couple have been
released by Somali pirates after being held captive for more than a year.
Paul, 60, and Rachel Chandler, 56, from
Kent, were seized from their yacht off the Seychelles in October 2009.
Mrs Chandler said: “I’m enjoying
being free”. The couple said they were fine, but will undergo medical
checks.
On release they were taken to Adado,
then Mogadishu, and have now arrived in Kenya. The BBC held off reporting the
release due to an injunction.
It observed the terms of the order
obtained by the Chandlers’ family which was intended to stop news organisations
covering their release until they were safely out of Somalia.
Mr Chandler told the BBC: “We’re
fine, we’re rather skinny and bony but we’re fine.”
The couple were told they were to be
released two days ago, he said.
“We were told on Friday in a way
which gave us some confidence to believe it. Otherwise we’d been told we’d be
released in 10 days almost every 10 days for the past nine months. So we’d
taken all these suggestions with a pinch of salt.”
Asked if he had felt their lives had
been in danger during captivity, he said: “That’s something we’ll talk
about later, but we were not really directly endangered by the gang, after the
initial seizure.”
The husband and wife both stressed that
the conditions of their captivity were not important, with Mr Chandler saying:
“You can see from our state that we suffered no serious physical
harm.”
However, he added: “We were beaten
once.”
Mrs Chandler later explained that the
beating had happened when they resisted their captors’ attempt to separate them
– an event she said was “very traumatic”.
Prime Minister David Cameron described
the release as “tremendous news”.
“We will ensure that they are
reunited with their family as quickly as possible.
“I unreservedly condemn the actions
of those that held the Chandlers for so long. Kidnapping is never
justified.”
The couple are now in the British High
Commission in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
A statement issued by the Chandler
family, issued once the couple had arrived in Nairobi, said that although the
couple looked to be in “relatively good health… we cannot yet be certain
how the difficulties that they have had to endure in recent months will have
affected them physically and emotionally”.
There was no official word on whether a
ransom was paid, but the BBC’s Frank Gardner said it was “the best part of
$1 million”.
A payment of about $430,000 (£267,000)
was made in June, but did not result in the release of the Chandlers, he added.
Our correspondent said it was thought
unlikely any of those responsible will be brought to justice in Somalia, a
country without an effective government since 1991.
Media speculation was thought to have
influenced the pirates, and so the family opted for a super-injunction banning
coverage of the kidnap.
Foreign Secretary William Hague
reiterated the long-standing British policy of not paying ransoms.
“I think it is right that
successive British governments have said we don’t make concessions to
hostage-takers. But it is also right to do everything else we have done in this
case and that the previous government did.
“We have used our contacts in the
region to try to gain information and to influence the hostage-takers. But no
British government is going to start paying ransoms for hostages.”
The Chandler family statement said:
“The family believes it would be irresponsible to discuss any aspect of
the release process as this could encourage others to capture private
individuals and demand large ransom payments, something that we are sure none
of us wants.”
Earlier in the Somali capital Mogadishu,
Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed met the couple and said the government
was pleased they had been freed.
He said the government had “exerted
every humanly possible effort to bring you back to your loved ones”.
Baroness Kinnock, who was involved in
the case during her time as Foreign Office minister for Africa, said: “The
trauma will have been terrible for them, and they’ll need a lot of help and
support.”
She said there had been “a lot of
activity” in the Foreign Office, but it was difficult to make contact with
the pirates.
Any ransom payment by the UK government
would “cause an escalation of this kind of activity”, she said.
In June, the couple asked Mr Cameron
whether he was willing to negotiate with the kidnappers.
But the Foreign Office said at the time
that the UK government’s policy of “not making or facilitating substantive
concessions to hostage-takers, including the payment of ransoms, is
long-standing and clear”.
Earlier this year their captors
threatened to kill the couple if their demands for $7m (£4.4m) were not met.
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