• English Site
• > World

Kidnapped at Sea

Families Fear a Showdown with Pirates

By Henning Lohse in Paris

On April 4, pirates raided and seized a 288-foot, three-masted yacht off the coast of Somalia. As France waits for the pirates' demands and prepares to act militarily, if necessary, the families of the vessel's 30 crew members anxiously await a resolution.

"It's terrible," says Valérie Garrec. "I'm so afraid that the situation will spin out of control and something will happen to my son." Garrec has hardly slept since a handful of Somali pirates seized and abducted the French luxury yacht "Le Ponant" off the Horn of Africa on April 4. Her son Thibaut was one of the 30 people -- including six women -- on board taken hostage. The 20-year-old Frenchman had joined the crew of the luxurious, triple-masted vessel a few weeks earlier. "He was so excited," Garrec says. "It was his first big trip. Thibaut told me how the captain promised him 'a fantastic voyage' when he was hired."

The dream of the young man's mother -- who followed her son's journey in her imagination and celebrated when he crossed the equator -- ended abruptly last Friday. "We were just turning on the computer to write an e-mail to Thibaut when we received a call from the shipping company." Garrec was in shock. In few words, a company employee informed the parents of the hostage crisis on the high seas. Since then, Garrec and her husband have been glued to the radio and are constantly checking online for the case's latest developments. Most of all, however, they sit in their house in Brittany, hoping for the phone call from the foreign ministry in Paris announcing the end of the hostage crisis -- and liberating them from their horror.

In private, however, the Garrecs -- and the families of the other 29 hostages -- know that the chances of a quick resolution are slim. The last hostage crisis off the perilous coast of Somali ended on Feb. 1, 2008, when -- after 47 days -- pirates finally released a Danish tugboat and its crew. "The shipping company paid a $700,000 (€443,000) ransom," explains Ahmed Said Awnur, who is the minister for seaports and fisheries of Somalia's semiautonomous northern region of Puntland.

Hijacked ships often end up in Puntland's territorial waters, and statistics paint an unsettling picture of the security situation there and off the whole coast of Somalia. Last year a total of 30 ships fell prey to these modern pirates, who encircle their victims with high-powered speedboats, seizing and kidnapping freighters and passenger ships alike.

Frightful Alternatives

With growing concern, the families of the hostages have been taking note of how officials in Paris are gradually reacting to the spectacular ambush at sea and how the tone of politicians is slowly becoming more severe. Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the first to react to the kidnapping, stressed that his government intends to "do everything possible to achieve the peaceful release of the hostages and to do everything possible to protect the lives of the people on board." Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was also statesmanlike and seemed willing to negotiate when he announced two days later: "We have been able to establish contact with the pirates. Now it could take a long time."

But the tone changed after the weekend following a crisis meeting at the Elysée Palace led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Information leaked after the meeting that surely could not have pleased the hostages' families. The defense ministry announced that France would send its elite GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) police unit, which specializes in hostage rescue, to Djibouti.

Commenting on the new nuances in French information policy, the left-wing daily Liberation wrote: "Nicolas Sarkozy has taken this approach to openly demonstrate that France is taking a tougher position than that suggested by Fillon's first, soft statements." Skeptical observers are asking themselves how Sarkozy -- a man not known for his patience -- will react to a hostage crisis that could last weeks or even months.

Sarkozy is the commander-in-chief of the French military. If he opts to use force, the deployment of the GIGN gendarmes will be the first step. The GIGN special forces and a few units of the French navy are the only French special forces trained to liberate seized ships. Since the GIGN's televised storming of an Air France jet in Marseilles that had been hijacked by Algerian terrorists around Christmas 1994 and its successful liberation of its passengers and crew, the unit's members have been lauded as national heroes, capable of saving the day in seemingly hopeless situations.

Clinging to Hope

Even thinking of these heroes, however, horrifies Dominique Stramba-Badiali, whose son is among the hostages, and he finds the prospect of a heroic effort to liberate the ship chilling. His 26-year-old son, Timothée, was another one of the ship's crew members taken hostage, and he boarded the vessel in the Seychelles, looking forward to "a fantastic voyage." His father is worried because the kidnappers' demands are still unknown. "I sincerely hope that the general staff in Paris will opt for negotiations," Stramba-Badiali says, "and choose to avoid any armed combat."

Valérie Garrec battles her fears by clinging to the few pieces of good news. "We found out that the hostages were able to shower and that they eat breakfast together," she says. "This means that they haven't been separated. That's good news." Garrec also enthusiastically recounts her son's last e-mail. "Thibaut wrote to us to describe how they had celebrated crossing the equator. Everyone on board wore a costume, everyone drank a glass of rum, and the captain even dressed as a pirate."

But Thibaut also wrote in his last e-mail how the crew of "Le Ponant" was preparing for the dangerous segment of the voyage near the Somalian coast. "He wrote that they were going to sail through an area infested with pirates," his mother recounts, "and that the crew had transformed 'Le Ponant' into a 'phantom ship.' They planned to travel at night without lights to be as inconspicuous as possible."

But the plan failed, and the heavily armed pirates discovered the luxury yacht and reportedly boarded the vessel without firing a single shot.

To help dispel the constant fear for her son, Garrec has contacted other hostage families. "We are all holding our breath," she says, "and trying to reassure each other. But the nights are very long…"

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan