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Somali pirates tortured captured Nigerians before release
[Beirut Daily Star: Region] Drug-fuelled pirates holding a Nigerian boat during one of the longest hijackings off Somalia locked the crew up, aimed a machine gun at them, and fed them little but rice, the captain said. Pirates released the MV Yenegoa Ocean, a firefighting and supply tug, last week after capturing it with 10 Nigerian crew on board 10 months ago en route home from Dubai."We were taken to a remote area off Somalia and we were living like animals in that place," the boat's captain, Graham Egbegi, told Reuters in a telephone interview from Yemen. Egbegi, who is from the Niger Delta region of the west African nation, said the pirates came armed with AK-47s and hand-held rocket-propelled launchers. They locked the crew in their cabins after capturing the boat. They were held off a remote village in north-east Somalia. "They mounted an automatic machine gun on deck and pointed it at us," Egbegi said. "They became very hostile after that. They were always high on drugs. They were living like demons." Though the pirates had demanded more than $1 million at the start of the saga, no details of any ransom have been made public. Egbegi said he had no information on that. Posted by: Fred 2009-06-11 |
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