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Pirates release 3 kidnapped Asian sailors
Pirates have released three sailors kidnapped in the busy shipping lane between Malaysia and Indonesia, Japan's Foreign Ministry said Monday.
Two Japanese and a Filipino sailor were abducted last week when pirates attacked a Japanese-registered tugboat in Malacca Strait. The rest of the tugboat's crew later arrived safely in Malaysia.
"It's like I'm finally back in the world of the living," Shunji Kuroda, one of the kidnapped sailors, said in a phone interview with NHK from his hotel in Thailand.
The boat's Japanese captain, Nobuo Inoue, 56, spoke by phone with the shipping company's president and confirmed that he and his two abducted crew members were safely released, according to Japanese Foreign Ministry official Masahiro Takagi.
Takagi declined to comment further until he was able to meet with Inoue, Kuroda and the Filipino sailor, Edgardo Sadang, 41. The ministry official declined to say whether ransom was paid.
Japan's public broadcaster NHK said the sailors were released early Monday in the southern Thai province of Satun. Thai authorities plucked the three from a small boat in the waters about 12 miles off the coast, NHK said.
Kuroda, 50, said the pirates took the three to an island after changing boats more than five times, adding that the attackers "were very cautious."
"The night after we were kidnapped, we took a small boat to an island. We had to jump off the boat before reaching the shore and we waded through water to reach a sandy beach," he said.
He said he was fine, adding "I only suffered a cut on my foot when we had to walk through mud in jungles."
The tugboat was attacked March 14 off Malaysia's Penang island, near the opening of the pirate-infested channel that separates Indonesia's Sumatra island and peninsular Malaysia. |
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