Pirates free kidnapped Japanese, Filipino sailors
Pirates free kidnapped Japanese, Filipino sailors
M. Jegathesan, Agence France-Presse/Kuala Lumpur
Two Japanese officers and a Filipino crewman kidnapped during a pirate attack in the Malacca Strait have been released unhurt in southern Thailand after being held captive for almost a week, officials said on Monday.
The three men, looking exhausted and close to tears, later told a news conference how they were switched among fishing boats, marched through a jungle and then dumped into a boat at sea.
"I thank everybody for helping to secure my safe release. I would first of all like to meet my family and I will return back to work," said Japanese captain Nobuo Inoue, 56, after arriving in Malaysia's Penang island by road from Thailand.
The captain, chief engineer Shunji Kuroda, 50, and Filipino crewman Sangdang Paliawan, 31, were picked up on Sunday from the island of Adang-Rawi in Thailand's southern province of Satun, Thai marine police said.
A diary kept by the captain and read out at the press conference said the kidnappers appeared to have Indonesian accents.
It said that after the three seamen were seized from their tugboat on March 14 they were taken to a jungle area and later passed between several fishing boats. Then they were set free on a small boat on which they drifted for two days before being found by Thai marine police.
The men are due to fly back to Japan on Tuesday.
"After being detained for a whole week it's such a relief to be back to society. I'd like to thank everybody involved," said Kuroda.
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi welcomed their release. "That's good," Jiji Press news agency quoted him as saying.
Kuroda earlier told public broadcaster NHK by telephone from a hotel in Thailand: "We are okay."
"We just suffered cuts on the soles of our feet as we walked through mud of a jungle" after landing on a sand beach somewhere, he said, while noting the kidnappers had not harmed them.
The tugboat, owned by Kondo Kaiji Co., was in the Malacca Strait on its way from Indonesia's Batam island to Myanmar when pirates fired five shots before boarding it and kidnapping the three sailors.
Kondo Kaiji would not comment on whether it paid a ransom.
The operations officer for Malaysia's northern region marine police, Mokhtar Othman, told AFP police were keen to interview the three sailors to gather information about those involved in the attack.
"We want to know who was behind the attack. We do not know if ransom was paid to secure the release of the three seamen. We surely want to interview them," he said.
The attack on the tug was the third pirate raid on shipping in the Malacca Strait within two weeks.
The captain and chief engineer of an Indonesian tanker kidnapped two days earlier were freed last Thursday after the ship's owners paid a ransom, Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau, told AFP.
A Malaysian captain and an Indonesian chief officer who were kidnapped from a tugboat on Feb. 28 were also released unharmed. It is not known whether a ransom was paid for them.
The narrow 960-kilometer-long Malacca Strait, bordered by Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, is used by about 50,000 ships a year carrying a third of world trade and half its oil supplies.