Captured Briton plays down tanker hijack ordeal
One of the British sailors held captive by Somali pirates on a hijacked oil tanker made light of his ordeal and said the hostages’ families “don’t have too much to worry about”.
Chief engineer Peter French is among 25 people being held on the Saudi-owned Sirius Star. He told ITV News last night the pirates had not mistreated the captives, and said he hoped to speak to his family again soon.
Mr French, the ship’s chief engineer, was seized along with James Grady, from Renfrewshire, the second officer when pirates attacked the Sirius Star on November 15, 420 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia.
It was not clear whether Mr French, the ship’s chief engineer, was being supervised by his captors during the phone call to ITV News.
“The pirates (are) no problem whatsoever. We have had no mistreatment or anything,” he said. “Hopefully we are going to get some more phone calls to our families soon. Our families don’t have too much to worry about at the moment.
“All in all, we are not too badly off.”
The 1,080ft (330m) long ship was fully laden with two million barrels of oil when pirates boarded it and is the largest vessel ever to be hijacked in a region which has become notorious for piracy.
Mr French said: “The boys (the crew) are quite happy. We are talking to them all the time, reassuring them. Apart from the inconvenience of being locked up, our life is not too bad.”
Mr French said the crew were allowed a measure of freedom by the pirates.
“I don’t mean we’re locked up as in we’re not locked up in cabins or anything, we go about our normal daily work,” he said. “We’re just continuing doing our normal day.”
One of the pirates, who called himself Daybad, told the BBC on Monday the hostages were being treated like “prisoners of war”.
On Sunday the pirates moved the supertanker further away from the Somali coast after an extremist Islamic group threatened to attack them for taking a Muslim-owned vessel.
Al-Shabaab, the group leading an insurgency in the war-torn east African country, said last week it would fight the pirates. Local clan elder Abdisalan Khalif said the ship moved to a point about 30 miles off the coast of the village of Harardhere.
“Perhaps (the) pirates are afraid the Islamists in town will frustrate their efforts to resupply the ship,” he said.
