A British couple held hostage by pirates for more than three months have told of brutal treatment at the hand of their captors who they say are perilously close to killing them.

In separate telephone interviews with CNN affiliate ITN, Paul and Rachel Chandler pleaded for help and spoke of their fears that they were just days away from death.

An emotional Rachel Chandler also spoke of how she thought “dying would actually be an easy way out” and how she wanted to see her husband “at least once before we die.”

The Chandlers were taken by pirates from their 38-foot yacht, the Lynn Rival, just days after setting sail from the Seychelles islands for Tanzania.

Their captors initially demanded a ransom of $7 million, but the British government — in line with longstanding policy — has refused to pay.

“Please, please find a way of helping us because it really is a very desperate situation here,” Rachel Chandler said in the latest interview, in which she said she had not seen her husband for two weeks since they were violently separated.

“I’ve broken a tooth because I was hit on the head with something, probably the butt of a gun… I don’t know… and yes, so we have been physically attacked.”

Rachel Chandler, 55, who along with her husband has been held for nearly 100 days, said the pirates had issued a new deadline.

“They’ve just told me that if they don’t get the money within four or five days they’ll kill one of us.”

Audibly close to tears, she also asked for a message to be passed on to her husband.

“The message to him is hang on for me because I hope — my biggest hope — is that I shall see him at least once before we die.”

She added: “It’s hard not to feel, well, dying would actually be an easy way out. It’s hard to explain but it is when you’re all on your own in this country and you’ve no idea where you are and no idea when something might happen and whether I’ll see Paul again. It’s just very, very despairing”

In a separate telephone interview 24 hours earlier, Paul Chandler, 59, described how they were separated and savagely beaten.

“We tried to stay together and they threw us to the ground and whipped us and beat Rachel with a rifle butt and I was dragged off, taken to a different location.

“I was allowed to telephone her about 12 days ago. Se said she was being tormented all the time and then she said she was giving up. They’ve lost patience. They set a deadline of three or four days, if they don’t hear, then they say they will let us die.

“We’re held in solitary confinement effectively. You know it’s just [like being] treated as a captive animal.”

It was not clear under what conditions the captives, who have been in sporadic telephone and video contact with journalists, had been allowed telephone access. ITN said both conversations had been shared with the British Home Office and his family.

Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s official line on hostages says “the government will not make substantive concession for hostage takers, including the payments of ransom.”

Pirates have been very active off the east coast of Africa in the past several years, operating out of lawless Somalia.

Last week, pirates attempted to hijack an Indian crude oil vessel 105 nautical miles from Somalia, the EU’s anti-piracy naval force said. The pirates opened fire on the ship and were later arrested.

Piracy on the high-seas reached a six-year high in 2009, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which monitors shipping crimes.

Source (article): CNN

Source (picture): TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

On this day in 1992, 1,800 United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country.

Following centuries of colonial rule by countries including Portugal, Britain and Italy, Mogadishu became the capital of an independent Somalia in 1960. Less than 10 years later, a military group led by Major General Muhammad Siad Barre seized power and declared Somalia a socialist state. A drought in the mid-1970s combined with an unsuccessful rebellion by ethnic Somalis in a neighboring province of Ethiopia to deprive many of food and shelter. By 1981, close to 2 million of the country’s inhabitants were homeless. Though a peace accord was signed with Ethiopia in 1988, fighting increased between rival clans within Somalia, and in January 1991 Barre was forced to flee the capital. Over the next 23 months, Somalia\’s civil war killed some 50,000 people; another 300,000 died of starvation as United Nations peacekeeping forces struggled in vain to restore order and provide relief amid the chaos of war.

In early December 1992, outgoing U.S. President George H.W. Bush sent the contingent of Marines to Mogadishu as part of a mission dubbed Operation Restore Hope. Backed by the U.S. troops, international aid workers were soon able to restore food distribution and other humanitarian aid operations. Sporadic violence continued, including the murder of 24 U.N. soldiers from Pakistan in 1993. As a result, the U.N. authorized the arrest of General Mohammed Farah Aidid, leader of one of the rebel clans. On October 3, 1993, during an unsuccessful attempt to make the arrest, rebels shot down two of the Marines’ Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 U.S. soldiers.

As horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including footage of Aidid’s supporters dragging the body of one dead soldier through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering—-President Bill Clinton immediately gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit. When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. A ceasefire accord signed in Kenya in 2002 failed to put a stop to the violence, and though a new parliament was convened in 2004, rival factions in various regions of Somalia continue to struggle for control of the troubled nation.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2008-12-09