Two British hostages held on the hijacked Saudi oil tanker Sirius Star spoke for the first time last night and said they had not been mistreated by their pirate captors.
Peter French from County Durham, the ship's chief engineer, said the hostages' families "don't have too much to worry about" and even asked about Newcastle's result against Chelsea at the weekend in a phone interview with ITV News.
French, and second officer James Grady, from Renfrewshire, are among 25 crew held off the Somali coast by a pirate gang which seized the ship on November 15. The pirates are asking for a ransom estimated at $15m, half the original demand.
"The pirates [are] no problem whatsoever," French said. "We have had no mistreatment or anything. Hopefully we are going to get some more phone calls to our families soon. Our families don't have too much to worry about at the moment. All in all, we are not too badly off."
It was not clear if French was being supervised by his captors during the call.
"The boys [the crew] are quite happy," he said. "We are talking to them all the time, reassuring them. Apart from the inconvenience of being locked up, our life is not too bad."
He said the crew were allowed a measure of freedom by the pirates. "We're just continuing doing our normal day."
Grady said the hijacking took place at lightning speed. "It was early on the 15th," he said. "Ship's time 0855 on board, and by two minutes past nine ... they had control of the bridge."
On Sunday the pirates moved the supertanker further away from the Somali coast after an extremist Islamic group threatened to attack them for taking a Muslim-owned vessel. Al-Shabaab, the group leading an insurgency in the war-torn east African country, said last week it would fight the pirates.
Local clan elder Abdisalan Khalif said the ship moved to a point about 30 miles off the coast from the village of Harardhere. "Perhaps the pirates are afraid the Islamists in town will frustrate their efforts to resupply the ship," he said.
The 330-metre-long ship was fully laden with 2m barrels of oil when the pirate gang boarded it 11 days ago. It is the largest vessel ever to be hijacked in a region which has become notorious for piracy. There have been at least 96 pirate attacks so far this year in Somali waters, with 40 ships hijacked.
Fifteen ships with nearly 300 crew are still in the hands of Somali pirates, who dock the hijacked vessels near the eastern and southern coasts as they negotiate for their ransom.
