Kidnapped Sailors Phone Home

by Nancy Knudsen on 6 Jul 2008 Two German cruising sailors kidnapped with their son and a French skipper from a yacht last month by pirates off Somalia's northern Puntland region have been in contact with their families, the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel said in a report Sunday.

So far, the couple have only been identified as Jurgen K., 63, and Sabine M., 51, and their yacht as Rockall. According to the reports in Der Spiegel, they were allowed to telephone relatives on Friday.

They told family members they were 'well given the circumstances'.

The German ministry of foreign affairs had also sent a package of medication via intermediaries for the man who is a diabetic.

Earlier reports said that the pirates have demanded two million US dollars in ransom money, after they kidnapped them from their yacht on June 23.

Der Spiegel also said that a crisis cell in Berlin was negotiating with them through a tribal leader.

For many years yachts have been warned against going within 200 nm of the shores of Somalia, but recently kidnappings of merchant mariners have occurred as close as 50 miles from Yemen, and well outside Somalian territorial waters.

While many cruising sailors pass through the region, and there have been many incidents of robbery, and yachts - notably Gandalf and Mahdi in 2005 - have been shot at, this is the first known kidnapping of non-professional cruising sailors, and is sending alarm bells through the long range cruising community.

Last month, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution allowing foreign states to dispatch their military to combat piracy.