After more than one year in the hands of Somali pirates, the British citizens Paul and Rachel Chandler got released on November 14 and returned home. But this would not have happened if it was not for a doctor who took care of them while they were being held hostage in Somalia. RNW met up with him.

By Abdurrahman WARSAMEH, Mogadishu

“When I first saw them they were in bad shape. They were separated, sick, traumatized and in the most inhumane situation,” said Dr Mohamed Abdi Elmi aka Hangul, who treated the elderly British couple during their captivity by Somali pirates.

Tough times
Paul and Rachel Chandler, now enjoying the taste of freedom back home in the UK, have been through very tough times during their captivity, lasting more than a year, in a mountainous area in central Somalia.

The two were seized when Somali pirates boarded their yacht off the Seychelles on 23 October 2009. Most of the time, they were held incommunicado with the outside world.

But Dr Hangul was one of the few people who had access to the Chandlers during their captivity. He said that he was allowed to carry out some medical checks on the Chandlers and give them some medications because the pirates wanted to keep the hostages alive to demand a hefty ransom.

“Early in the year when I first managed to visit them, they were held separate locations and that had its toll on their well-being,” Dr Hangul told Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW).

“They lived in the most appalling conditions for a human being. Rachel was kept in a makeshift camp under the shade of a tree and without the basic essentials in hot temperatures.” said Hangul.

Paul was kept somewhere inside Addado, a town in the central Somali region of Galgaduud. Since the pirates did not want him to know where Paul was being held, the two men met in an unknown location in the mountains.

Instrumental
Hangul was instrumental in the negotiations to free the retired couple.

He was joined by local elders to try in the first place to persuade the pirates to unify the Chandlers, a plea which they later accepted.

Meanwhile, frantic efforts both inside and outside Somalia were galvanized to collect donations to pay out the ransom. But the money raised fell far short of the sum required.

“We spoke to clan elders close to the pirates. We spoke to relatives, friends and family members of the pirates. Finally, we got in touch with them,” Mohamed Dahir, a local elder in Addado who also took part in the negotiations told RNW.

Eventually, together with Dr Hangul’s efforts, the local elders convinced the pirates to release the Chandlers in exchange for $470,000 US dollars. The sum was raised by Somalis in the Diaspora and inside the war-ravaged country.

But it seemed that it was the Somali government, also involved in the release of the couple, which received the most credit out of this. After their release, the Chandlers were asked to pass by Mogadishu, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, for a formal handshake with senior government officials and “a bit of photo-op.”

Afterwards, the couple flew off to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where they eventually left for the UK for a family reunion for the first time in a whole year.