Surviving piracy, a seafarer's story - Sailors Society

I didn’t think I was going to survive.

I can’t describe how much they tortured us. They killed one of my crew mates; they shot him in the chest.

The pirates burned us and forced us to make videos asking people at home for money and told us that if their demands weren’t met they would kill us one by one.

We weren’t fed and were made to work morning to night. After two and a half years, our ship sank and four of my colleagues drowned in the stormy seas.

After the ship sank, the pirates took us in land to a village where they kept us in a mud house meant for two people, there were 11 of us crammed in it and the food and water they gave us wasn’t enough to survive on.

Read the full story here - Sailors Society

Image: Jakir and his parents who have been supported by Sailors’ Society and the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Programme (MPHRP), which work closely to provide piracy response in certain cases

The MV 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.

Early on in the hijacking, one crewmen was shot dead by the pirates in an apparent fit of anger after negotiations with the ship's owners broke down. In 2013 the vessel sank in a storm, resulting in five of the crew drowning along with some of the pirates as they abandoned ship.

Pakistani crew members were freed after a Pakistani businessman raised a $1.2 million ransom payment, the last of the 11 crew escaped in June 2014.

Image: MV Albedo sunk close to the Somali Coast in rough seas (EU NAVFOR)