Insurers Pay to Free Pirates' Hostages

A group of Somali pirates was yesterday enjoying a $400,000 ransom extracted from a Greek insurance firm after agreeing to release 23 sailors they had held hostage for the past three weeks.

Following a deal believed to have been brokered by a former SAS officer and Somali diplomats in Dubai, the Filipino crew were allowed to re-board the Greek-owned cargo ship, the Panayia Tinou.

The pirates allowed the hostages to go free after four days of intensive negotiations. The deal was concluded when the Hellenic Union of Insurance for War Acts, fearing for the sailors' lives, agreed to surrender the ransom.

The Cypriot-flagged ship had been seized after it entered Somali waters to escape rough weather. The crew was apparently caught off guard when the pirates approached the vessel in a speedboat.

Yiannis Stathakis, of the Samios Shipping company in Piraeus which owns the vessel, said: "They were armed, and from the first moment they demanded the ransom."

"At first there were 14 of them, before they were reinforced by 13 others."

During the course of the negotiations, he said, most of the crew were forcibly removed from the ship and taken to huts on a nearby beach.

Several warships from Nato countries, seconded to the region, witnessed the drama unfolding but were unable to intervene as the vessel was in Somali waters. One of the Nato vessels, a German gunboat, escorted the Panayia Tinou to safety after the pirates' departure.

The incident has highlighted what seamen describe as the "explosive dimensions" of piracy in recent years. According to the International Maritime Organisation there have been 2,626 attacks on ships involving pirates on the high seas since 1984.

After the Straits of Singapore and the Indian Ocean, Somalian waters are considered to be among the most dangerous.