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Georgian men escape Somalia
09/02/2003 18:49 - (SA)
Tblisi - Six Georgian sailors held hostage by pirates in Somalia for more than six months made a daring escape on Sunday, and are now headed for the Yemeni coast, reporters in Tbilisi said.
The sailors, taken hostage aboard the Greek oil tanker Jenlil last July, tricked their captors into leaving the ship on Friday and made good their escape, reporters of the Georgian daily 24 Hours said after the seamen had contacted them by radio.
The crew of the Jenlil - all Georgian nationals though two of them are ethnic Russians and one an ethnic Armenian - convinced the Somali pirates that the tanker was out of fuel and that food supplies had also run out.
After the pirates boarded a nearby schooner to go and seek food in the nearby port of Bossaso, they raised anchor and headed for the open sea, the 24 Hours reporters said.
They had made previous unsuccessful attempts to escape, they said, quoting the ship's 51-year-old cook Guladi Rukhadze.
The Panamanian-registered Jenlil was captured by pirates off the Puntland region of northeast Somalia on July 30.
The crewmembers were held hostage on land by their captors who last August threatened to kill them if a ransom of US$600 000 was not paid.
An attempt by the tanker's owners to negotiate their release last September broke down when the pirates rejected an offer of $35 000.
In mid-July the 23 crewmembers of the Greek freighter Panagia Tinou were released by Somali pirates who had held them hostage for two weeks after payment of a $400 000 ransom.
Somalia has had no central government since the overthrow of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. - Sapa-AFP
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