Pirates release sailors from Japanese boat in Thailand

Channel News Asia ^ | 21 March 2005

[Racehorse]

KUALA LUMPUR: Three crewmen on a Japanese tugboat seized by pirates were released unhurt in southern Thailand after being held captive for a week, officials said.

Two Japanese seamen -- 56-year-old captain Nobuo Inoue and 50-year-old chief engineer Shunji Kuroda -- and Filipino crewman Sangdang Paliawan, 31, were freed late Sunday near the coastal town of Satun, just north of the Malaysian border.

"They were found late Sunday near Satun. They are safe and in good health. They will be taken to Penang (in Malaysia)," Masaru Aniya, a spokesman for the Japanese embassy told AFP.

[. . .]

Kuroda said the pirates had been "very cautious" and the three crewmen had been forced to change fishing boats more than five times after being kidnapped.

The Japanese tugboat owned by Kondo Kaiji Co. was in the Malacca Strait on its way from Indonesia's Batam island to Myanmar when armed pirates fired five shots at the boat and kidnapped the three sailors last Monday

Kondo Kaiji said the company would not comment on whether it paid a ransom to the kidnappers

[. . .]

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 Centre of the International Maritime Bureau told AFP.

A Malaysian captain and an Indonesian chief officer who were kidnapped from a tugboat on February 28 were also released unharmed. It is not known whether a ransom was paid for their freedom.

[Racehorse]

Do not sail lightly armed through the Malacca Straight. In another story, The Japan Times reports the Japanese Tugboat was attacked by 30 pirates. These are not Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean swashbucklers.