After 151 days.. the release of Egyptian sailors kidnapped in Somalia

Listen to the article. The audio text is automated, generated by an automated system

More than five months after they were kidnapped off the Somali coast, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry announced, on Wednesday, the release of 8 Egyptian sailors who had been detained on board a ship off the coast of the Puntland region in Somalia since May 2.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Ati directed the Egyptian embassy in Mogadishu to receive the sailors after their release, check on their conditions, and work to facilitate their return to Egypt on the soonest flight, according to a statement by the ministry, which explained that “the release of the sailors came based on the directives of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and with follow-up by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in addition to high-level contacts with Somali and Yemeni officials, which continued throughout the period of their detention.”

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry also reported that "the consular sector met, during the last period, with the families of the kidnapped people to inform them of the efforts made to release them. The Egyptian embassy in Mogadishu also facilitated, during the kidnapping period, the sailors' communications with their families to check on them."

For his part, Somalia's ambassador to Egypt, Ali Abdi Awari, announced that he had contacted the eight Egyptian sailors to check on them, stressing that "they are all fine and safe."

He also said in a statement that the release of the sailors came in light of the ongoing high-level communications between Egypt and Somalia, pointing to continued coordination between the relevant authorities in the two countries to complete the necessary arrangements to secure their return to the homeland, stressing that the Somali side is following up with the Egyptian authorities on all procedures related to the safe return of the sailors to Cairo.

It is noteworthy that the oil tanker "MT Eureka" was pirated at the beginning of last May by Somali armed groups while sailing off the coast of Yemen, and 12 sailors, including 8 Egyptians and 4 Indians, have been detained on board since May 2.

For 151 days, the families of the sailors waited for news of their relatives, amidst ambiguity surrounding the conditions of their detention and their fate, while negotiations for their release repeatedly faltered, due to disagreements regarding the value of the requested ransom.

Note that the M/T Eureka ship incident is not the first of its kind in the waters surrounding Somalia, as the region has witnessed in recent weeks repeated waves of piracy attacks and ship hijackings, many of which were linked to the detention of crew members and demands for financial ransoms.

In just four months, pirates seized 6 commercial ships, including 3 ships hijacked off the coast of Yemen, in a remarkable return to maritime piracy activity that the international community believed had been largely contained over the past years.

The most recent of these attacks was the hijacking of the oil tanker MT Sibu 1, flying the Eritrean flag, in late August, when six gunmen boarded the tanker, which had a crew of 20 people on board, before taking it towards the coast of the Somali region of Puntland.