British Couple Held by Pirates Freed
The Guardian reports:
A British couple held captive for more than a year by Somali pirates said they were "skinny and bony" but otherwise fine today after a substantial ransom was paid to secure their release.
Taken hostage after pirates boarded their yacht during what was meant to be the retirement trip of a lifetime, Paul and Rachel Chandler, 61 and 56, from Tunbridge Wells, landed in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on a charter flight, and were taken to a "place of safety" by diplomats from the British high commission.
Earlier, the pirate gang holding them had ended their terrifying 388-day ordeal by handing them to officials in Adado, central Somalia. An agreement to release them was finally sealed last week with the payment of the second part of a ransom reported to have totalled about $800,000 (£500,000).
"We're fine, we're rather skinny and bony but we're fine," Paul Chandler told the BBC in Adado before flying on to the capital, Mogadishu, for a brief press conference at the presidential palace.
Looking painfully thin but smiling broadly, Rachel Chandler told reporters: "We're happy to be alive, happy to be here, desperate to see our family and friends, and so happy to be amongst decent, everyday people, Somalis, people from anywhere in the world who are not criminals, because we've been a year with criminals and that's not a very nice thing to be doing."
