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Freed sailors arrive home after months of captivity
“I'm exhausted, I need a good rest,” 24-year-old ship officer Aysun Akbay told reporters at İstanbul Atatürk Airport. “It was hard but we returned safely. I told my family that I was all right, but they didn't believe it, they were very afraid.” Akbay was one of the 17 crew members of the MV Horizon 1 -- which was hijacked on July 9 in the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia -- who returned on Wednesday.
Four crew members were still in Jordan, waiting for immigration problems to be resolved. Two more were to return later by ship. The ship was released on Oct. 5 after a ransom payment. The ransom amount was not announced. Somali pirates typically demand millions of dollars in ransom for the return of a ship and its crew, and negotiations often last months.
Following the release, the ship was escorted from Somalia by Turkish warships. “We were scared even though she kept saying that she was fine. We are so happy that they are back safely,” Özcan Akbay, Aysun's father, told reporters. Aysun Akbay, the only woman in the 23-member crew, said she was planning to continue working at sea but added that she was definitely not going to return to the Gulf of Aden.
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Not everyone was as lucky as Akbay. The family of Ahmet Anar, one of the four crew members who stayed behind in Jordan, lamented that he could not take the flight to İstanbul because his passport had expired. “My son called me and said he would return in a few days, after his passport procedures are completed,” said his mother, Sabiha Anar. Speaking to the private Cihan news agency at the family's house in the southern province of Adana, Anar said she was unable to sleep for days after receiving the news that her son's ship had been released.
Somalia has been ravaged by unrest since 1991, and piracy has flourished off its coast, especially in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes. Patrols by international warships have deterred some attacks, but stability within Somalia's borders is seen as the only long-term solution to the scourge.
Speaking to the private NTV television network aboard the ship before their return, the crew members said they endured hunger and cramped conditions on their anchored ship and constant, nerve-jangling gunfire by their abductors during their three-month captivity.
Mustafa Şenkal, a sailor on the ship, said he had been shot in the leg by a pirate. “They were playing with their guns all the time. One of them accidentally pulled the trigger and shot me. Boy, it did hurt,” Şenkal said in the NTV interview on Monday. “The third officer helped me a lot and kept me medicated.”
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