While we continue to remain focused on helping Paul and Rachel obtain their freedom, we are also concerned about the overall piracy activity in the region. Since insurance companies usually settle these cases without much media involvement, the public is unaware of how rampant this situation has become.

The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) is currently running a big campaign to fight piracy and to persuade governments to commit resources necessary to end the increasing problem of Somalia-based piracy. Below is a link that will take you to a petition to help move this initiative forward. Please consider signing it!

Paul Chandler, a 60-year-old retired civil engineer, said: “I’d like to say congratulations to David Cameron first. And as new prime minister, we desperately need him to make a definitive public statement of the government’s attitude to us.

“If the government is not prepared to help, then they must say so, because the gangsters’ expectations and hopes have been raised at the thought of a new government and there might be a different approach.”

The retired couple from Tunbridge Wells were enjoying the yachting holiday of a lifetime last October when they were kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean just off the Seychelles, hundreds of miles from Somalia.

They have been held for more than seven months and reveal on Channel 4 News tonight that almost half their time in captivity has been spent away from each other in solitary confinement.

At first the pirate gang demanded a huge ransom for their release, though they have since said they are open to negotiation. It is official British government policy not to pay ransoms to kidnappers.

Last Thursday the Chandlers were allowed to talk relatively freely to a freelance Somali journalist, Jamal Osman. The couple were driven to a secret location in windswept Somali scrubland, somewhere between the towns of Adado and Haradhere and miles from any human settlement. The Chandlers were escorted by around 10 pirates travelling in two 4×4 cars, all the men heavily armed and refusing to be filmed.

Yet in the interview, which lasted over an hour, the hostages openly defy their captors standing all around them.

“This is not piracy and must not be reported as such,” Mr Chandler said. “It is kidnapping and extortion and even torture.”

“We are just animals to them,” explained his wife Rachel, a 56 year old economist. “We have been kept caged up like animals. They don’t care about our feelings and our family and our lives and what they’ve taken. They don’t care whose lives they ruin. They just want the money.

“They don’t understand that we are just ordinary people. They think we come from a rich country and that if they point a gun at us and threaten us that we will find a way of raising money.”

After being held for months against their will in one of the most lawless countries on earth, the couple seem remarkably resilient and in reasonable health.

Paul Chandler revealed that 97 of their more than 200 days in captivity had been spent apart, something they have found particularly difficult after 30 years of marriage: “We don’t have children so we’re very close to each other. We’ve never been apart for more than a few days. We’ve been married almost 30 years, so to be separated is real torture.”

“They never tell us what’s happening next,” added Rachel. “Especially when we were isolated, when we were on our own, simply not knowing what was happening and whether we would be together again – when, where each other was, was real torture, mental torture.”

Rachel was last filmed in January, when she had clearly lost weight and was in distress. Since then, news reports have suggested she was raped or shot, but this appears to have been a mix of pirate propaganda and media hype.

When they were filmed last week, the couple said they have enough medicine and food, with the pirates serving up local dishes including goat’s liver, a Somali delicacy. Although they constantly live in fear of being separated again.

Last October, the Chandlers were kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean just off the Seychelles, hundreds of miles from Somalia. Freelance Somali journalist, Jamal Osman, met the couple at a secret location somewhere between the towns of Adado and Haradhere and miles from any human settlement.

“The second time we were separated we refused to be separated initially, and that was a bit silly,” said Paul. “We were physically separated, we were whipped and Rachel was hit with a rifle butt and has a broken tooth.

“It’s a long time ago, the wounds have healed. And that was the only occasion, only one occasion, when we had any real aggression.”

‘A laughing stock’
Rachel says that it is still the capture and looting of their yacht, the Lynn Rival, which they had sold their house to buy, which upsets her most. “I can’t think about it without bringing tears to my eyes….having to abandon her was the very worst experience, and when I realised that nothing would ever be the same again.”

What pains the Chandlers even more is that a Royal Navy refuelling ship, the Wave Knight, was just a hundred metres or so away when the pirates were aboard the yacht. Though instead of storming the boat and risking casualties, the British sailors kept away.

“The fact that we’re alive and talking to you suggests that they were right to do what they did,” Paul acknowledged.

“But it really makes them – the whole, that fleet of warships – a laughing stock and that is what they are, a laughing stock for these people. They can’t do anything.”

Jamal Osman, who interviewed the Chandlers, describes his experience:
While I knew at the back of my mind that these gunmen could kill me, I had to approach them, not as criminals, but as people with important and interesting information.

Since the gangs are not politically motivated, their interest in the Chandlers is the hope that at some point they will get millions in ransom money. This particular gangs seemed experience in kidnapping and one of them told me that it was his third such case.

Credit to the Chandlers, I was very impressed with them and the way they are coping with this horrific ordeal. In particular, Rachel seemed resilient. The gangs were even complaining about her determination not to be terrorized.

One of them said: “If you tell Rachel to do something, she will ask why. Sometimes she becomes aggressive toward our boys. She wants to control us.”

Read more from Jamal Osman

Though the pirates holding the Chandlers may not give up without a fight, the hostages find the courage to condemn their kidnappers outright on camera.

“They show no compassion as you and I would understand it”, Rachel said. “They are only interested in us as a vehicle for raising money, and their only interest is in keeping us alive in order to do so.”

“We are old enough to be the grandparents of most of the people in the gang,” said Paul. “But, you know, we can’t communicate with them, we can’t say to them ‘how would you like it if your grandparents were taken away to another country, separated, kept in solitary confinement?’”

The Chandlers’ daily challenge is filling time. Never knowing when or where they will be moved next, as the pirates evade any attempt to rescue them. The couple say they have a small supply of books and play cards endlessly, even brushing their teeth for up to ten minutes on end, just to survive the tedium of hostage life.

“The only thing that is difficult is the lack of privacy,” Rachel said. “But I am now so used to them that I just go and find a bush to wash and use the toilet. And if they see me, that’s their problem. I have to make do and, you know, one does.”

The broadcast interview ends with an appeal to the couple’s families to keep their spirits up back home. “We are being strong for them because they keep us going,” says Rachel.

“We know they are doing their best. It has been seven months and we know they must have been suffering alongside us, and we care about them very much.”

“There’s one thing that is important and that is freedom” concludes Paul. “We don’t have it. Nothing else matters really. We don’t miss any thing. We miss everything. We miss the ability to walk out of the door and determine our own lives, wrongfully taken from us.”

Foreign Office statement:
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: “Paul and Rachel Chandler are innocent tourists. They were sailing their yacht when taken hostage by a criminal gang seven months ago. 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. This has been the policy of successive governments and has not changed.

“Our thoughts are with their families on the release of this video, and our consular officials are in close touch with them. We again urge those holding Paul and Rachel to release them safely, immediately and unconditionally.”

An article was just posted by the Mirror that stated Pirate leader Maslah Yare put Paul Chandler, 60, and wife Rachel, 56, into a car and hid them in a forest. 

Al-Shabab, a group linked to al-Qaeda, had been closing in on the pirates’ lair. Yare, who wants a £1.3million ransom, said they would be abandoned if Al-Shabab got too close because “our lives are more important”.

It has been rumored that Al-Shabab may have similar financial interests in participating in the kidnapping of the British sailing couple,  Paul and Rachel Chandler.

Rachel Chandler and her husband are as far from salvation as eve

Rachel Chandler shot. Please call urgently … That was the dramatic and brutally short text-message sent to us by our Somali contact last weekend.

And like every such missive about the British couple held by pirates in the Horn of Africa, it demanded to be checked.

The Daily Mail has the mobile-phone number for the gang’s spokesman, a lugubrious sounding character who calls himself Ali Gedow, and we immediately tried to call it.

But separating fact from fiction in this intractable saga is never easy. For one thing, ‘Ali’ rarely deigns to answer unsolicited calls, and when he does his heavily accented English is rendered incomprehensible by whisky and khat, the pirates’ drug of choice.

For another, one never knows whether to believe his rambling pronouncements, for the pirates have become as adept as Alastair Campbell at manipulating the media, to increase the pressure on those negotiating to free their hapless captives.

And so it was now. After reportedly confirming to a Somali radio station that 56-year-old Mrs Chandler had indeed received gunshot wounds in some unspecified incident, by the time we got through to him last Monday, pirate Ali had changed his story.

Kidnapped: Paul and Rachel Chandler were sailing around the world when their boat was hijacked by Somalian pirates

‘No, it is a mistake  -  another girl was shot, not Rachel Chandler,’ he told the Mail during our longest and most lucid interview since the Kent economist and her husband, Paul, were kidnapped while yachting in the Indian Ocean.

‘Two of our pirates had an argument, and one fired his gun, hitting a Somali girl who was with Rachel in the leg. Rachel was close by at the time but she was not injured. She is quite OK.’

In a bizarre aside, he added that the pirates have given Mrs Chandler a gun with which to ‘protect herself’ from renegade guards.

Why would they risk this when she could use the weapon to shoot her way to freedom? ‘She will never do this,’ he replied with a hollow laugh. ‘There are 100 of us and she is alone in the desert. She knows she would be killed.’

For good measure, Ali added that Mrs Chandler  -  who has appeared dangerously thin and close to breaking point on video appeals sanctioned by the pirates  -  is now much improved in health and spirits.

Her 60-year-old husband, who seems to be bearing up better than his wife, was also faring well, he claimed.

‘We have given them books and a radio. They stay in a comfortable tent and they eat pirate food with us; sometimes we even drive them around to show them the scenery,’ he said, making it sound as though they were on an extended holiday.

‘If they get sick we give them herbal medicines made from leaves. They are not together any longer. We’re keeping them a few miles apart. But they are relaxing with our people.’

Hostage: Rachel Chandler and her Somali captors. The British couple have previously made a direct plea on video warning UK authorities they fear the 'kidnappers are losing patience' and may kill them

However, tomorrow will mark the 150th day since these middle-class adventurers from Tunbridge Wells were taken hostage during what should have been an idyllic cruise.

And despite the rash assertion of a senior Somali politician earlier this month that the Chandlers would be released within ten days (a deadline which passed a week ago) the Mail has learned that, in reality, efforts to free them are hopelessly deadlocked.

Indeed, according to well-placed sources, little progress has been made since October 23, when, after sending out a last anguished message apparently meant for Mr Chandler’s sister  -  ‘PLEASE RING SARAH!’  -  they were abducted at gunpoint.

Their white 38ft yacht, Lynn Rival, which they bought in the mid-Nineties and sailed in exotic locations for six months of the year, recording their progress on a widely read blog, has long since been returned to Britain.

Stripped and trashed by the pirates, it was recovered by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Wave Knight, whose commander has been criticised for failing to act as the pirates sailed off with their quarry.

It is being preserved as a ‘crime scene’ for use in a future trial, if ever the kidnap gang, who could be prosecuted in a British court, is brought to justice.

But how to repatriate the yacht’s owners is an all together thornier issue.

If the Chandlers had been crewing for some big shipping company, they would almost certainly have been released months ago.

Mr and Mrs Chandler collect a trophy during a stop-off at the Indian island of Goa

Since losses accrued through acts of piracy are invariably covered by insurance, and can amount to £50,000 for every day a vessel is impounded, it makes business sense to pay the ransom as soon as possible.

Unpalatable and morally questionable as this may sound, it remains the reality, even though average demands have escalated alarmingly in recent months.

In January, the owners of one Greek-flagged oiltanker reportedly paid a record £4.6million to release the ship, laden with two million barrels of oil, plus 28 crew members.
As usual, the cash was simply withdrawn from a bank, secured in a waterproof container and dropped by parachute on to the deck of the pirates’ ship at a pre-arranged time. Once counted, the tanker was permitted to sail on its way.

On average, it takes 70 days for this process to be completed, according to one London-based maritime lawyer who acts in these matters; less than half as long as the Chandlers have been held.

But their plight is very different. An ordinary, semi-retired couple, they and their relatives are by no means wealthy, and have no way of paying the exorbitant sum demanded.

During the five months they have been held, this has varied seemingly at whim.

Sailing enthusiast: Paul Chandler pictured on board the Lynn Rival

This week, spokesman Ali was talking in terms of £1.3 million to £2.6 million, although he added that the Chandlers could also be freed in exchange for the release of seven ‘ brother’ pirates awaiting trial in Kenya.

Arrested by an EU naval patrol boat as they attacked a French trawler some 50 miles from the Lynn Rival on the day the Chandlers were captured, these seven pirates may have been part of the same gang, although there is no confirmed link.

At all events, with more than 100 pirates languishing in their jails, there is no chance of the Kenyan authorities complying with this demand. Nor will the British government negotiate with the pirates, as they have repeatedly made plain.

Therefore, the unenviable task of trying to make the pirates see reason has fallen to Mrs Chandler’s brother, Stephen Collett, a retired farmer from East Anglia.

Understandably, he declines to utter a word about this parlous task.

However, according to a source close to the family, the pirates phone him frequently and at all hours. So he is constantly on red alert for the latest call from Somalia, and under enormous stress.

‘It seems we have reached an impasse,’ says the source. ‘The pirates don’t seem to understand that the Chandlers are not from a rich family. Even if they can raise some modest amount of money there’s still a huge gap in the middle.

‘The family are very frightened, naturally. Their only consolation is that, so far, the pirates have never harmed one of their hostages. Sadly, though, it seems Paul and Rachel might be in for a very long stay.’

Listening to Ali this week, his grim prognosis seemed well justified, for the pirates’ spokesman seemed lost in the realms of fantasy.

When the Mail explained the Chandlers’ financial position and ventured that his gang  -  who regard themselves as a latter-day version of Robin Hood and his merry men  -  might enhance their image by releasing the couple as an act of mercy, he laughed incredulously.

‘We don’t need a good name,’ he said. ‘Money is better than a good name. We don’t care if Paul and Rachel are nice people. This is just about money.

‘We don’t believe they [presumably he meant the Chandlers' relatives] can’t find the money. They are from Britain. Everyone there has £2million or £3million.

‘We need that much just to cover our expenses. We have to keep 150 men and we have to buy weapons, boats, engines. We have to buy big houses and 4×4s.’

He laughed again and added: ‘And each one of us has to keep four wives.’

The notion that the pirates need a seven-figure sum to recoup their outlay is preposterous. Nor is the ransom shared out among the gang and impoverished Somali villagers, as the pirates would like us to believe.

In truth, as we have discovered during a lengthy investigation into the burgeoning piracy industry, most of the estimated £80 million so far paid in ransom money has been stashed away by a few hugely wealthy pirate barons.

Meanwhile, their henchmen, who sail up to 1,500 miles from the Somali coast in tiny skiffs to seek out vessels sailing outside EU patrolled shipping lanes, are paid a few hundred dollars.

For this pittance, they are forced to remain at sea for up to a month at a time and risk being shot, drowned, arrested, or starving to death when their fuel and food supplies run out miles from shore.

Yet they dare not return without capturing a ship, for their ruthless bosses do not take kindly to seeing their resources wasted on a fruitless mission.

It is a measure of the pirates’ increasing desperation that, in a farcical episode three days ago, one raiding party even attempted to storm a Dutch warship in the EU’s anti-piracy fleet.

Realising their mistake too late, the ten pirates were caught as they tried to flee.

Yet incredibly, the EU patrol ship let them go, even though two empty AK-47 shell- casings were found in their skiff and a rocketpropelled grenade-launcher, which had clearly been thrown overboard, was floating behind them.

It was decided that this would be insufficient evidence to bring a successful prosecution  -  a view which illustrates why it is proving so difficult to scupper the pirates once and for all.

It will doubtless be just as tricky to convict the ‘brother’ pirates whose release is being demanded by Ali, and who may have been running with the gang who kidnapped the Chandlers last October.

Now languishing in Mombasa’s forbidding Shimo la Tewa maximum-security prison, and facing 20 years in prison  -  if ever the wheels of Kenyan justice begin to turn  -  they are a ragged bunch, all young and poor, and unable to speak anything but Somali.

Interviewed by the Mail this week, their lawyer, Dickson Oruku Nyawinda, betrayed the ambiguity of their position.

In one breath, he insisted they had been fishing when they were caught (despite the fact they were miles out at sea and the prosecution claim they had no nets). In the next, he trotted out the pirates’ well-rehearsed line in self-justification.

This is broadly that, for years, ‘their’ coastal waters have been plundered by foreign fishing vessels and used as a dumping ground for industrial waste  -  and it’s payback time.

Exactly how this entitles them and their brethren to maraud in an area of ocean bigger than continental Europe, and frogmarch a pair of middle-aged pleasurecruisers away to months of terror, the lawyer did not explain.

Yet when he portrayed his clients as mere ‘foot soldiers’ alongside the ‘real pirates’ who recline beyond reach in their luxurious guarded compounds, there was no denying he had a point.

In the pirates’ stronghold, Haradheere, once an impoverished farming village, the air is that of a gold-rush town.

The potholed streets are jammed with huge, chromed four-wheel-drives, the shops are filled with imported luxury goods, and prostitutes from all parts of East Africa hustle for trade in the thronging bars.

A few months ago, the pirates even set up their own stock exchange there.

Anyone can buy shares in one of the 72 ‘maritime companies’ that profit from piracy  -  either by paying cash or donating useful equipment, such as weaponry or a rope-ladder. In return for their investment, they are paid a cut of the ransom money.

Meanwhile, in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, middlemen launder the pirate barons’ ill-gotten fortunes by snapping up desirable mansions and investing in legitimate businesses, such as textiles.

One shady broker calling himself ‘Willy’, who was accompanied by an armed bodyguard when he met us this week, said he had arranged so many property deals for the pirates that they had sparked a boom in the market.

Then there is the little-mentioned link between the pirates and al-Shabab, the fanatical Islamic militia who control much of southern Somalia and are fighting to take over the entire country.

Glancing around furtively as he spoke to us in the back of a parked car in Nairobi, a smartly dressed pirate named Mohamed admitted belonging to the hardline group, which styles itself on the Taliban and has enforced Sharia law in swathes of Somalia.

The spoils of piracy were a vital source of al-Shabab’s funding, he said, describing how he had taken part in five or six lucrative ship hijackings that helped to buy weapons for the bloody insurgency that is tearing Somalia apart.

This, then, is the tortuous and unfathomable netherworld into which the Chandlers drifted 150 days ago on the yacht that had brought them so much joy.

In the coming days and weeks, we can be sure there will be more melodramatic newsflashes from the pirates’ spokesman, Ali.

But whatever the truth behind the Somali spin-doctor’s cynical pronouncements, one thing is certain: it will take every ounce of Stephen Collett’s persuasive skills to bring his loved ones home.

Source:Mail Online

I have yet to find any evidence that supports the validity of this announcement, so I’m not going to re-post the original story.  Also, as barbaric as this tragedy is, I haven’t found any evidence that the pirates harm their captives without provocation.    

Regardless, the fact remains that both Rachel and Paul Chandler are still being held captive after almost 5 months and we would like to see them rejoin their families!  Hopefully we will see some positive news soon!

Somali doctor Abdi Mohamed Elmi Hangul speaks at Medina hospital, Mogadishu, Somalia, Monday, March 8, 2010. Dr. Abdi Mohamed Elmi Hangul told The Associated Press during an interview at Medina Hospital that a British yachting couple seized by Somali pirates and held in separate locations have been temporarily reunited after weeks apart. The doctor who treated the two said Paul and Rachel Chandler were suffering from severe anxiety brought on by their separation and captivity in war-ravaged Somalia. (AP Photo/Mohamed Sheikh Nor)

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A British yachting couple seized by Somali pirates and held in separate locations have been temporarily reunited after weeks apart, a doctor who treated the two said.

Paul and Rachel Chandler were suffering from severe anxiety brought on by their separation and captivity in war-ravaged Somalia, Dr. Abdi Mohamed Elmi Hangul told The Associated Press during an interview at Medina Hospital on Sunday. The two were seized from their yacht, the Lynn Rival, in October and have been held apart for most of their captivity. Hangul said the pirates had phoned him on Sunday and said the couple had been temporarily reunited.

“The two hostages were in different locations but I advised the guys to reunite the couple, because both of them were worrying about their separation but they now told me that the two people have reunited already,” he said.

Hangul treated the two hostages last month at the invitation of their kidnappers, in the camps where they were being held along the Somali coastline.

“The hostages are suffering from diseases … Paul was suffering just pain and coughs and (Rachel) Chandler was suffering from mental disorders, especially restlessness, palpitations and she was very anxious, because she was worrying about the separation between her and her husband,” he said.

“A new case of eye infection emerged later, (the pirates) informed me by telephone that Paul was taking eye drops, Paul told me that he finished the eye drops,” he said. He has not seen the Chandlers since.

A Somali politician last week expressed hope that pressure from Somalis in the diaspora could lead to the two being freed without a ransom being paid. But pirates have rarely, if ever, freed a vessel and crew without a payment. The Chandlers’ captors have repeatedly said they will not free the two without a ransom — money the family says it does not have. The British government says it does not pay ransoms to kidnappers.

“I advised the pirates, you have to release these people, they are old, they don’t have anything,” said Hangul. “I always say that to them but unfortunately they still insist the only option is ransom money.”

In talks in London on Monday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed to press for the couple’s release.

Brown “welcomed an assurance from the president that his government was doing everything within its power to ensure their safe and swift release,” the British leader’s office said in a statement.

“He made clear that the Chandlers should be urgently reunited with their family. They agreed to continue to work closely together to secure this outcome,” the statement read.

Brown pledged to cooperate closely with Ahmed’s transitional government to “create a stable and piracy-free Horn of Africa,” according to the statement.

Ahmed met Brown and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband during a visit to London.

The Chandlers are highest-profile of more than 130 sailors held captive on the Somali coast. The couple’s plight has garnered more attention than that of hostages from developing countries like India and the Philippines, who make up the bulk of the captives. Furthermore, ship owners can leave them to languish for months before engaging in serious negotiations and families are often not kept informed of progress.

Experts say the pirate problem is a symptom of Somalia’s lawlessness on land. It has not had a functioning government for a generation and the current administration is too focused on fighting an Islamist insurgency to go after the well-armed and well-paid pirates.

The multimillion dollar ransoms are one of the few ways to make money in the impoverished country. Attacks about doubled between 2008-2009 and are becoming increasingly violent.

Sourced from Artesia News

Paul Chandler and his wife Rachel, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, were captured while sailing from the Seychelles towards Tanzania in October last year.

Somali deputy parliamentary speaker Mohamed Omar Dalha said he was hopeful they would be freed within two weeks. He said that communities inside and outside the war-ravaged country have been working to negotiate their unconditional release.

Stephen Collett – Mrs Chandler’s brother – refused to be drawn on any details of the hoped-for release but said he was “pleased” by the news. He has been in contact with the pirates via local broadcasters and the Foreign Office, who have been working towards their release.

The Chandlers are among about 130 sailors held hostage in Somalia.

In a telephone interview with a Somali television station, Mrs Chandler, who has recently appeared gaunt in pictures, said: “I’m obviously very tormented and very, very lonely and worried.” Meanwhile, Mr Chandler described their forced partition as “torture”.

The British Government has refused to pay a ransom for the couple and called for their immediate release. The Somali pirates have previously demanded a “seven million dollars” (£4.6 million) ransom for their safe release.

In a phone call translated by the BBC, one of the pirates said: “If they do not harm us, we will not harm them – we only need a little amount of seven million dollars.”

Mr Chandler, 59, and his wife, 55, were captured when armed men boarded their yacht as they slept.

It has since emerged that the crew of a Royal Navy vessel was forced to watch the Chandlers being kidnapped by pirates but military officials have insisted that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary replenishment tanker Wave Knight, carrying 75 merchant seamen and 25 Royal Navy sailors, could not have acted without endangering the lives of the couple.

Speaking to The Times from the place where Paul and Rachel Chandler are held, a pirate leader identifying himself as Ali Gedow rejected appeals from the British and other expatriate Somali communities worried about their reputation. “We don’t care about their pressure,” he declared.

But he made no mention of the pirates’ original demand for a $7 million (£4.5 million) ransom and suggested that they might release the couple if they can recoup their “expenses”. He put those at around $2 million, claiming that they included the cost of 150 guards, renting vehicles and food.

Even that amount appears to be out of the question. The British Government has refused to pay any ransom and the Chandlers’ family do not have that sort of money. But the pirates’ lessened demands have given rise to hopes that they realise they have captured the wrong people and are looking for a face-saving way out.

A Whitehall security official toldThe Times: “This case is unusual. Unlike seamen kidnapped in the region, the Chandlers are just ordinary holidaymakers without the backing of a big company and the pirates may well be realising this now.”

Ridwaan Haji Abdiwali, a presenter with the Somali satellite television channel Universal TV, who has used his show to appeal for the Chandlers’ release, said that the pirates would have put the couple up as collateral to borrow money. “Since Somalis [abroad] began pressuring them it seems they are reducing their demands,” he said.

The Chandlers, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, were captured on October 23 as they sailed from the Seychelles towards Tanzania. Mr Gedow claimed — absurdly — that their yacht was inside Somali waters and that the pirates were simply protecting those waters from illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping.

He said Mrs Chandler’s brother, Stephen Collett, called the pirates almost daily to appeal for the couple’s release, but the British Government had made no contact. If the Government did not pay, he warned, “they will never see this couple again”.

Mr Gedow claimed that the Chandlers’ health was poor and deteriorating, with Mrs Chandler, 56, scarcely talking and unable to walk any distance. There was no need for the pirates to consider killing their hostages as they would die soon anyway.

There is no way to corroborate those claims, though the pirates did release a video in January showing Mrs Chandler looking thin and frail. Mr Gedow refused to put Mrs Chandler on the telephone, though he claimed that he was standing next to her.

He said the Chandlers were being kept in separate locations near the coastal town of Haradheere in case the British military tried to rescue them, and had not seen each other since a Somali doctor visited them last month.
He said that he felt sorry for them but “those responsible are the British Government and the British people who don’t care about these two. Other hostages have been released by their own countries . . . Everyone else in the world is helping their own citizens.”

The Government argues that it should do nothing to encourage the seizure of other British citizens. A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We are monitoring the situation very closely and doing everything we can to help secure a release.”

A spokesman for the Chandlers’ family declined to comment, but a letter released to the media earlier this month said a continuing “dialogue” with the pirates was making progress.

Original source from Bartamaha.com

The Somali group are desperate to help

SOMALIS living in Redbridge have vowed to do “everything in our power” to help free a British couple kidnapped last year by Somali pirates stalking the Indian Ocean.

Yusuf Munye, 34, of Chester Road, Seven Kings, is leading a united front among the borough’s Somali population in the push to get Rachel and Paul Chandler released.

They were kidnapped while sailing from the Seychelles to Tanzania in October.

Their captors have threatened to kill the couple if their demands for $7million (£4.4million) are not met.

Mr Munye said: “Some people think the Somali community in Ilford supports the pirates.

“The main reason we have come together is to show we don’t support them.

“We are totally against their actions and we support our British brothers and sisters.”

Video footage released of the couple at the end of January showed them appealing for help after almost four months in captivity.

Last week, members of the Redbridge Somali community met in the Cardinal Heenan Centre, High Road, Ilford, to discuss what they could do to help bring the couple home.

Mr Munye said: “The government has said they won’t pay a ransom but we’re thinking about raising money to help.

“We’re also talking about trying to make contact with these pirates to help bring the Chandlers home.

“If we’re able to talk to them or to others in Somalia, there’s a chance they will release them.

“We will do everything in our power to free them.”

Mrs Chandler, 60 and Mr Chandler, 56, are understood to have been separated by their captors and are being held in areas between the coastal village of Elhur and the small town of Amara, which is further inland.

Sourced from www.ilfordrecorder.co.uk

Somali Labour Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir, who is from Suleiman sub-clan of the Habar-gidir, and reported to be a relative of the clan who have kidnapped Paul and Rachel Chandler, said yesterday: ‘We urge the pirates to release the old British couple unconditionally.’

He made the demand during a news conference at the Presidential palace.

‘We also urge the British government and all Somalis to participate in releasing the couple by whatever the means. They are innocent Britons in the hands of criminals,’ he added. However, he refused to elucidate further on what he meant by the reference to the British Government.

Cruising sailors Paul Chandler, 60, and his wife Rachel, 56, from Tunbridge Wells in Britain, were kidnapped at sea in October while a British ship stood by helplessly for fear the couple would be harmed if they attacked. The pirates have threatened to kill them if they are not paid £4.4million, although it is anticipated that a much lower figure would release the couple.

Images released recently, such as the one above, showed the couple, who are being held separately, looking gaunt and distressed.

The UK government says it will not pay ransoms because that would encourage further kidnaps of Britons.

The development came as Danish special forces dramatically recaptured a hijacked cargo ship. The troops, from a Danish warship, scaled the sides of the Ariella, whose 25 crew had locked themselves into a secure room. The pirates had already left, apparently scared off when the Danish ship’s helicopter fired warning shots at one of their boats.

It was the first time the EU naval task force off Somalia had intervened in a hijacking.

Last week the Chandlers were briefly reunited. ‘We brought them together a few days ago,’ said Abdullahi Dhagaweyne, a commander of the pirate gang holding the Chandlers in a phone call to British press. ‘I think they had some kindhearted meeting and enjoyable moments after more days of separation. We are going to bring them together again soon.
‘When we separated them again the woman was shrieking.’

Mr Dhagaweyne, who spoke from Haradheere, the pirate town on the central Somali coast where the couple have been kept, warned the gang was ‘losing patience’ and could sell them to al-Qaeda-linked factions.

He said: ‘I cannot confirm that they will forever be in our hands if no ransom is paid, there might be another decision in the future.’
A sale to Somalia’s radical al-Shabaab militia, which has been linked to al-Qaeda, is a potential alternative to a ransom payment which the Chandlers relatives and friends cannot afford.

‘There are negotiations by phone these days, but no tangible developments yet,’ he said. ‘No government has called us, only families and other so-called negotiators.

‘We may sell [the Chandlers] to anyone who pays us the money we want, if we don’t get ransom in the future.’

Since the kidnapping, Sail-World has been contacted by cruising sailors who were with the Chandlers before they set off for Tanzania. The sailors, who did not want to be named, said that the dangers were well known to all cruising sailors in the Seychelles and that they had been warned repeatedly that they should not hazard a voyage to Tanzania.

Now, the manager of the Seychelles Yacht Club, Andre Hoarau, has confirmed this, and that he also warned the couple.
‘I told them again and again, we all told them, that they should not go to Tanzania,’ he told British newspapers.

He said that he had passed on the multiple reports of pirate activity in the area.

by Sail-World Cruising