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.