Abducted Turkish Seamen Released by Pirates

The fifteen Turkish sailors who were kidnapped by pirates last month in the Gulf of Guinea returned home on Sunday after three weeks in captivity, greeted by Ankara’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and their families. The container ship’s captain revealed that the hijacked crew was held for ransom in a forest in Gabon, watched over by armed buccaneers, after a well-orchestrated assault in which the bandits disabled the boat’s electronic systems and shot one of the crew members dead. Turkey did not reveal whether a ransom was paid for the men’s release. According to the International Maritime Bureau, west Africa’s Gulf of Guinea – off the coasts of Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Togo, Benin, Gabon and Cameroon – is the most pirate-infested sea in the world, with 130 sailors kidnapped just last year in 22 separate incidents. Only five sailors were kidnapped in the rest of the world during that time.