The crews of two Egyptian fishing boats who escaped from Somali pirates after months in captivity have arrived home to a hero's welcome.
A military marching band and crowds of relatives and well-wishers greeted the crews as their two rusty ships docked at Attaka in the Gulf of Suez.
The 34 men, seized in April, reportedly freed themselves by seizing their captors' weapons and overpowering them.
Two pirates were killed while eight have been taken to Egypt for trial.
Whirling dervishes danced for the crowd on the Attaka quayside and banners proclaimed: "Welcome to the sons of Egypt, the heroic fishermen."
The sailors said that during their captivity they had been locked in the refrigeration compartments of the ships and treated badly.
"The pirates wanted to starve us to death. They gave us rice infested with vermin and we were unable to get a bath all this time," said Mohammed Tolba el-Hebabi, one of the crew.
Their vessels, the Ahmad Samar and the Momtaz I, were seized by pirates off the Somali coast in April after they strayed from Egyptian waters.
The pirates demanded a ransom but the crew members' families said they had no way of paying the hundreds of thousands of dollars asked for.
Pirates 'drugged'
The BBC's Yolande Knell in Cairo says there are conflicting reports about exactly how the fishermen managed to escape.
One of the crew, Sayyed Sobhi, said they had disarmed the pirates while they were sleeping.
But the owner of one of the ships has told reporters that he helped intelligence services to carry out what was code-named "Operation Egyptian Dignity".
He said he travelled to Somalia and was taken out to sea to visit the crew by local people.
Once on board, he managed to drug the pirates, allowing the sailors to overpower their captors, he said.
"This is a story of Egyptian heroism," said Bakri Abul Hassan, the Red Sea director of the fishermen's trade union.
Eight of the pirates were captured and have been returned to Egypt where they are expected to stand trial.
The Egyptian authorities said they would be treated "in accordance with international law", the AFP news agency reported.
Somalia has been without a functioning central government since 1991, which has allowed pirates to operate in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
Earlier in June, the European Union, which co-operates with Nato in the region, agreed to extend its anti-piracy operation there until the end of 2010.
Two dozen ships from European Union nations, including Britain, France, Germany and Italy, patrol an area of about two million square miles
No comments:
Post a Comment