Kidnapped by Somali pirates | The Negotiators | Full Episode

okay in February 2014 I was sitting in my remote office in Stanford in Lincolnshire in the English countryside I was told that that mayham tree was a 29 man crew fishing vessel and the men have been taken ashore and held by Somali pirates they were largely from developing countries they weren't Europeans they weren't Westerners no government was taking responsibility for them there was no insurance available and really they were left to rot and to die quite disgracefully really and what would I help on that I specialize in kidnap negotiations particularly in Africa and Middle East and when the Somali piracy phase came along I switched from normal kidnaps to ship hijacks [Music] [Music] there were a lot of ships being held off the coast of Somalia any one time there are about 700 crew members being held on ships by Somali piracy I was based in Mogadishu as the head of the maritime security section of the UN political office for Somalia we were monitoring all of these ships modern piracy isn't that different to the piracy of hundreds of years ago pirates go out to sea with a mothership and usually with a couple of small skiffs it put with small arms ak-47s RPGs they go out to sea and they hunt for ships gotcha awesome this part of the world was a significant choke point of international trade and because these sea lanes are pretty constricted you don't have to go terribly far to find a ship [Music] a lot of naval ships were deployed in the region to try and prevent this but Somalis coastline is 3,200 nautical miles the navies couldn't be there all of the time or in the right place when the Pirates took a ship and these navies have rules of engagement they're capable of intervening while the pirate attack is going on but their rules of engagement didn't allow them to intervene once the pirates were onboard a ship ships would protect themselves going into that area in the early days by using razor wire by using high-pressure hoses to warn pirates off and it wasn't really for a few years before ship owners became comfortable with hiring armed guards or maintain a beam fully dissol sousou-sama its Divina have you been training in Indonesia are trying to achieve inside circle in and Sangha it's on board are you sleep which in the password then geology those gentlemen position successful landing was Antonio area can canoe Sameer Torah email home Amy are done holding lungi hi Donna sensing police and I dissolve aliens are equally nough Kwon ji-yong so according to German I mean at origin is a SAP [Music] and now I don't Sun idols law attorney upon them I drove in the danceable remember nice is such a good mom chun jung-bae not passes its essentia is about you I don't you know that's wrong general another woman in general pontoons always the central company it's just high social dirty young associate induce a change it's the 70th I just a challenger what rattan jingles usual hi Dawa do you know sound manner soon after this was hijacked the Pirates directed the crew to steam into Somali waters in Somali waters the the Pirates were close to home they were close to supplies and they were safe [Music] - moment and shooting commander sujean sits emotional oh boy some good ginger war shall repeat regimes each him by own a prudent ship owner would always enter the Gulf of Aden with insurance their time with an arm three we were working on three or four other cases there were literally ships lined up and sometimes we would be arranging recoveries day after day week after week sometimes with the same pirate crews one of the major problems we confronted with an arm three was that there was no insurance no kidnapped for ransom insurance no underwriter who would pay a connection policy and governments do not pay ransoms governments do not negotiate with kidnappers so there was simply no money and without money it's not possible to negotiate when the owners first contacted us our care instructions were to assist their representative who was negotiating directly with the Pirates we were concerned about that because the owners representative had no experience was not being advised by a professional first responder a professional negotiator and for many months we expressed our concern to the owners that really they needed professional help [Music] hide our channel contingent now answer to me come on the power man show you the night of starter home enlightens general contingent attention soon or even finding Ivana Somalia Maha Bhima even though a majority AR ye are not selection it's essentially an approach of the samosa equity attach a ginger chooses your intensity not an Panama they believed that they had reached the deal at one stage which the opposition reneged on negotiating with Somalians is a very tricky operation we were monitoring what was happening to the one we get information from a number of sources some from the military some from the local community some from sources I can't really talk about the noun 3 was deteriorating the equipment on the ship was not working well and particularly the anchoring system [Music] Marlene it padilha can do build up your dose of insanity de perros happens long she notices intelligences are Judith that walls a major problem when those pirates are on dry land it's so much easier for them then it's a nine-to-five job for them and the guards go back to their wives and families which they can't do when they're on board a ship now time was on their side [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Carol seventh Yong Chi energy sources introduces a durable high down you know talking down to shelter in can wanna come and nineteen the canteen the mother Susan C to Sri ami or wanna meows motto meliora Suzanne that wasn't intruder Union engine an RPG and a poo how when Sultan who toured in convene here Italia loogies and kendama you Cholula i'd say para it sold out you later I'm gonna need to move my true name is John John uses amor Joshua Shira buona sera the hijacking was in March 2012 and it wasn't really until early 2014 that the owners realized that things weren't going as well as they had hoped a ship being held by pirates has a value the cargo has a significant value and the insurance pays up but when a ship goes around it's usually a total loss there's no cargo there's no ship of any value it's just these poor crewmen largely from Asian countries who become forgotten their countries forget about them and they're just abandoned inside Somalia somebody had to do something about that and so we created this hostage support program to get them free [Music] we formed the crisis management team and put a plan in place and the crisis management team comprised John Steed well my little firm and Lizzie Edwards a professional and negotiator Somalis are very tough negotiators they live in a very hostile environment and they used to tough dealing they will exploit any weakness you show to them if you give away what you're likely to be able or willing to pay there's no going back one of the key rules in negotiation is that you don't negotiate with money you do not have the owners themselves only had limited funds and therefore we look to certain charities and it was through those anonymous charitable donations that we were able to assemble certainly the beginning of fighting fund to at least start the negotiation with the opposition before any call is made you should prepare a script of what you're trying to achieve and the main points during the call so I will have a written script glass of water a point of time we'll wait for them to call in and we will make their first communication typically smiley pirates will phone the negotiator and ask him to ring back so that they do not have to pay for the call Marley pirates generally don't speak English so they normally a point of freelance representative he might be a teacher or a tradesman or he might have worked with an NGO and he lost them be under pressure from the Pirates and well under pressure from us the first pirate representative who was talking to us who was a chap called Abdul Razak he was acting as a translator and freelance negotiator where you're talking to Somali pirates you've got a adopt a one-to-one tone and be robust and bold but not necessarily antagonistic the crew must be treated well we know how this works we're prepared to pay something what we can but the crew must remain live let's talk again in a few days time the impression you're trying to give is that you know what you're doing and there will be cooperation and something will be paid but not necessarily what they're asking typically the height of the piracy incidents in about 2010 2011 a vessel might go for anywhere between two and four million dollars and in this particular case Abdul Razak was asking on behalf of the pirates for about six or seven times what we thought the going rate was gonna be I think in the past unofficially some governments may have paid money for a pilot so from a pilots point of view they might think they were gonna get lots of money and after the initial demands it's important that you create some time and space well I shall pass that on to the charity or shall pass that on to the ship owners or the family and that usually gives you time to come back with a measured response to the demand so we knew we didn't have enough money there was absolutely no chance of the rents of money coming from families themselves and John and I scraped around searching dollar after dollar to try and raise a sufficient amount of money meanwhile the key priority was to ensure that our hostages were safe at all times and the easiest way to do that is to require proof of life proof of life is critical because in purely commercial terms you want to ensure that you are getting what you are bargaining for early in 2014 we received a YouTube video by a Somali television network my government I know my government is my government is beautiful but I asking for your help we're dying here for what for nothing we just want only to work in the ship to get money for our families and we work very closely through intermediaries with the families of the hostages to identify each hostage in the photograph so we were able to determine from that video that there were 26 live hostages one thing is that because of sickness and another again we need when we are in the poorest another room again died so the Chinese miss boy and the Indonesian Sailor passed away of untreated disease illness dehydration a lack of care the Somalis and I'm sad to say treated the hostages like they treat their goats well happily let crew die they're quite the let crew die if it's a small crew they they be reluctant to let people die but if it's a crew of 26 would it matter if to the pirates of three more died no they probably still get roughly the same mountain money so I like to come back with a reasonable opening offer not a lot of huge amount but enough to make them the lives of the the crew worth something for the pirates the same when the kidnap case like to put value on the hostages at first a blurry sack seemed like quite a reasonable negotiator as time went on he became more and more ingratiating and kept calling me his best friend he kept demanding small amounts of money for expenses you need to think of of piracy as a business it has a series of the key investors who pull up the money that send these Pirates out to see the investor like any other business wants a return on his money and the hierarchy of Somali gangs is unlike kidnap gangs and the rest of the world where there might be a few head honchos Somali pirate gangs are much more democratic the Pirates will sit down under an acacia tree they will drink tea they will examine at how much the ship is worth how much the crew they worth what countries they're from and they will come out with a target price and they will work out how much each man will get and then they will try and get much more than that as they possibly can in most kidnap and hijack cases the key issues are time and money and how much of each and in the mayhem three case the Somali pirates seem to have all the time in the world we didn't have very much money as a consequence the the case lasted a long time [Music] the crisis management team met regularly by telephone conference Liz would report his latest range of conversations he had with the Pirates often I would be speaking three or four times a week to pirates Abdul Razak called me on my mobile telephone sometimes he'd have to call me on my house telephone sometimes my teenage children would answer the call or I'd be in the garden and Abdul Razak would say something like hello can I speak to mr. Leslie he's my best friend I want to talk to him I think the children would say it's your best friend daddy it's Abdul Razak here he set a number of time deadlines to try and persuade us to reach agreement on high amounts of money but he said that crew a guy began to die of illness or there was crew was threatening to commit suicide before case was taking so long so you've got to try and neutralize any threats or pressures straightaway if someone dies it's going to make it very difficult and complicated for us to persuade the donors to pay you any money at all if you ignore deadlines you call their bluff and it means the next threat they make is is weaker but it's it's a fine line you have to know who you're dealing with [Music] ensuring that pirates kept looking after our crews that was the key challenge we had to find a way of buying medical aid getting food and paying people to deliver them to the hostages not quite as straightforward as it sounds because obviously the Pirates were extremely nervous about being located or where they were holding the hostages so they didn't want doctors visit NGOs turning up with boxes of food so Duncan Donna since our GJ woman that's uncalled for you Enugu hideout was anaemia its entire GJ woman something we do to honor those who save Hammond some more sound it's a one isn't one so my role was to gather information about what's happening make contacts with people on the ground used my contact the people that I know and then through those contacts particularly with local communities and with religious elders find out where these people were and we got them to build trust with the Pirates and we used them as intermediaries to deliver the aid or get medical support or bring in a doctor jingle it one gin resolve which I wrote it was three didn't hide I would say Panda I told you Peter how do they react once a Mordo yogi woman or naga so to come or China in China and wait a minute or so punching you see one the Pirates passed on a demand for a reasonable amount of money that we thought we could achieve we slowly built up to it over a period of months and then we actually had a verbal agreement on it after a pirate meeting and lunch that was organized by Abdul Razak in the middle of June 2015 in fact to the 12th of June which was my wedding anniversary we had reached an understanding the Pirates [Music] we started making arrangements for extraction for passports for logistics for air flight we had provided them with a letter of understanding a Memorandum of Understanding we were met with some silence and then we discovered that they had reneged on the understanding that we thought we had reached [Music] it was a major setback as simply they wanted more money they wanted more money and we reported it to the owners and the charities who had donated money to the cause and a further blow followed when one of the charities pulled out a substantial amount of money sometimes when major blows hits you have to you have to make the most of them and actually we were able to turn that around on the Pirates and say to them look this is now what has happened we've lost our funding and our offer can only now be significantly reduced or not they made a new but lower demand that they had previously and then it went back up again then it came down again to half the original figure and I was pretty frustrated there was some brutal brutal conversations between the pirates and myself they should have normal standards of morality and ethical behavior it was intolerable that they'd had allowed 26 fishermen with wives children grandparents cousins families at home to be held for three and a half years in their midst and why didn't they release them and I was told they didn't regard all the fishermen as worth more than the life of a single Somalis and that I should never forget this I took away the fact that the normal standards of morality and ethics did not apply I wrote her summary of the situation and sent that round to the crisis management team and George came back quite rightly and said look we're in for a long way now and we decided that we were in for the long haul and this was going to be a war of attrition so we cut off communication I was seriously worried that someone would die from that 26 crew this is a risk business any decision in a kidnap or hijack involves risk even doing nothing involves risk when you're dealing with smiley pirates in a negotiation you've got a shows strength you cannot show weakness because they will exploit it there's nothing else to be done they've rejected our offers and there was no ground to be made and we wanted to show that we were not coming to them and they had to phone us and reinitiate contact [Music] [Music] women three parts or juices hai Tao company opportunity and I know fundamental Austria Pookie woman [Music] hideout Powerman sangha training i ji-yong ji-yong omens Oh each in Baroness Aria nano hydrogen and oh Qian Bao Bao Yu Jiang and dojin cases at a surrender I wonder since a year in some k1 home celui I won't let you stay with Savi I'm gonna die watching cinnamon come down at all so good at all Indian cinema bang bang bang they would line them up and then fire an empty ak-47 so that there was just the click on an empty magazine psychological torture all to put pressure on the negotiation your turn by Johnny hi darlin go okay awesome oh wait it's angry with us they use the crew to phone families and embassies to put pressure on the government to pay more money anyone go on please I have family we don't want to stay here for long because how we stay here very hard womanizer hundred incision really been in the temples I in and come on donkey dumb and you know why job or temple Jia and none of the government's would pay money because it's against their national policy please you win sir they phone the UN and they phoned the Red Cross they found everyone they could and we spent quite a lot of time talking to those entities to persuade them not to get involved because they can only be one clear channel of communication during a kidnap negotiation for hostages in January they made contact again they blinked first we didn't have to do anything we just kept quiet but then we didn't want to carry on using deadly research in Somali cases when you've been talking to a pirate negotiator for six months or so you may not trust each other completely but you have a certain working respect and you have built up a working relationship there was a certain amount of rapport with a blowy sack but there's always something difficult or schemee about him and that's one of the reasons that we sacked out do research [Music] I had a lot of ingratiating while the creepy calls from him reminding me that I was his best friend [Music] and I had to flatter him tell him no you have to take some risks you have to break some rules otherwise you'd never get a result so I'm the guy on the ground I'm closest to where the action is to gather intelligence find out who the key players are at that time we learned that we were dealing with 38 investors who were owed money by the Pirates or who had invested in the that particular piracy out threats from the start the 38 vessels were part of the community local communities often support pirate gangs providing supplies and fuel and cars to the pirates on credit they're a vital part of the of the business and the support mechanism but lending to pirates is a high-risk activity and the reason is that some of the parts don't come back because they get they drown at sea or they run out of food water or they get shot up by the International naval forces so they were usually mark up the cost of those things by a hundred percent to cover their their risk so as these things become drawn-out the bills start to mount up as well and they have to get a solution that enables them to pay their debt by that time that already being held for about four and a half years the community was owed a lot of money surely off that we had a breakthrough we're approached by a community spokesman put in touch by one of John steeds good contacts in Somalia and he was representing a community and religious leader from the local clan saying clan as pirates he decided to introduce me to the local Sheikh Abdul Ali Sheikh Abdul Ali who was a leader of the community that were owed a lot of money by the pirates I had a long conversation with a sheikh so he is his interest to be involved in a resolution so that the local community would get their money and thus his esteem and influence would be increased and they would have this nasty rubbing saw in their midst removed and as a result of that the Sheikh said he would do all he could to put pressure on the Pirates to settle [Music] it was a lovely summer's evening in England and I was at my home in the countryside in linkage here [Music] I was involved with a pirate conference call and eventually we've got agreement that night I then had a letter prepared an agreement letter or contract if you like that I sent to the Pirates laying down the exact terms the amount of money of course it has no legal standing at all they're not they can't like we can't take them to court if they disagree but I asked it to be witnessed by the chief pirates and by also one representative from each nationality of the crew the purpose of getting so many people to witness the agreement was so that if they went back on their agreement there would be quite a large degree of lots of face that they had acted as honorable men and we actually use that word in the agreement we are negotiating as men one to another in honor there's a sort of sense of honor among thieves and that we'd reached an agreement we were acting to create a win-win and they came back very quickly with the proof of life as good photograph every man was holding the code word a series of letters on a piece of paper issued by the home team so that we know when the photograph was taken after the date that we assured the code word once we've got the proof of life with a code word and the agreement letter we were confident that we had a binding agreement it was quite an exciting time it was the end of her journey you know we were finally we could see the end in sight but there was then a delay of approximately six weeks fooled by clan fighting over camels they were stealing each other's camels occasionally afar Tillery shelves of each other made travelling difficult across clan boundaries and we had to take people across the clan banners to get them out of Somalia [Music] the final phase of any kidnap or hijack resolution is always complicated you've got an agreement you're sending money you don't know for certain whether you're going to get the hostages back we all assembled in Nairobi for this final final phase we were running this operation out of my back bedroom at home Maps everywhere charts it was like planning a military operation we had to concentrate on two things the first was delivery of what the Pirates wanted and recovery of the crew in order to array for the drop of the money to take place you have to be very specific about where the money's going to be dropped we sent detailed written instructions to the Pirates and we sent cartoon diagrams of how they should set up a drop zone I've dropped specialist was in the air and I was getting reports regularly from the aircraft about the time over the target for the drop and the pilots given very clear instructions about when to light the bonfire when to light the flares and I was talking to the pirates on the ground I signal through to the Pirates three hours to drop off the plane is three hours away are you on site now to which of the pilots replied yes yes you want to select the bonfires now said no no no there's still three hours away don't do anything yet then we gave them an update of two hours one hour and then about every 10 minutes and each time they also show me like the flesh shall we like the flares but you could feel the tension in the air you could fear the Pirates and the background shouting but any place I wanted to be was on that drop site too so it's like [Laughter] at about 10 minutes to go the aircraft came over very low when we said like the bonfires like the flares [Music] [Applause] [Music] woman down 19 Yahoo a woman's a woman drop a sanction he go down I didn't show something to work on subin's resident oh yeah Yahoo is either what Italian hi girls are more chewy some more hey take pout was only go tell them when a [ __ ] get it sorted on it huh moment orderly hate a Nigerian attention off we sent money quite a lot of money for the local community to organize an armed escort they turned up with six vehicles open backed pickup truck with a large machine gun placed on the back and an armed crew to give protection and then the third part was to get you get an aircraft and take it from Kenya from Nairobi into Somalia into this strip south of Galkayo that strip was not somewhere that was actually very safe the recovery aircraft was going to have to go into a very sensitive part of Somalia we went early in the morning I went with the aircraft into Somalia with another colleague and somebody from the UN using a UN aircraft was much much safer than using a commercial commercial aircraft I can I can tell you that there was a degree of in trepidation about this there had been conflict the day before in Galkayo we briefed the pilot that he he had to fly into the strip turn maneuver himself so that he could take off immediately if there was something wrong we arrived mid-morning it's just a a dirt strip with a tiny Hut [Music] was met by the community guy that we was working with us good morning John and I walked with him hand-in-hand across this airstrip to the hut we went into the door of the hut and [Music] these faces just lit up and somebody said are you John and I said I'm John I'm here to take you home these guys just hugged me they were they round the waist around my legs people were crying I'm sorry I can still feel the emotion now it was a fantastic moment it just extraordinary and then we got in the plane and took off the captain announced as we passed over the Somali Kenyan border you're now entering Kenya I was a huge chair and it really was over they were free George and I then went to the airport to find a large international reception committee and there were 26 very ragged short haired skinny looking fellows and they all look like schoolboys and I've been looking at photographs of these men on my office walls for the last 18 months and suddenly to see them in real life was extraordinary they all looked much smaller than I imagined the diplomats and the embassies and the media suddenly took over and we suddenly became onlookers at our own kidnap operation I realize we've done the job and all my responsibilities and just so the decision-making had now ceased and you realize that you have to fade back into the background and that's fine we're happy that I've done some crazy things in my army life but giving somebody back their life you can't do better at my firm that probably the best thing I've ever done in my life [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 331,925

Rating: 4.7804627 out of 5

Keywords: cna, cna insider, cna insider documentaries, the negotiators, somali pirates, hostage situation, negotiation, real life crime stories

Id: mg0i7L_FFLw

Length: 45min 41sec (2741 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Spamsational]

I really enjoyed this one. I hope you guys do too!

[u/CannaPanda69]

I just heard about the Amanda Lindhout case today and it was seriously a trip.

A Canadian journalist is kidnapped by a group of somali men for a year, finally released after negotiating ransom.

A year later, the leader of the crew sends her a facebook message saying, "hi".

Freaked out, she contacts police who start talking to him undercover under the guise of being a journalist. The leader, Adam, tends to be an egomaniac who dreamed of writing a book about Somalia's history.

They end up offering him a book deal and he actually falls for it. 15 years in prison. Guess he will have plenty of time for that book now.

[u/carrburritoid]

Good show!

[u/bonnydoe]

When they show a surviver in the first 10 minutes you know its a good documentary... and it was :)

[u/Kingkong67]

Thanks for sharing, this was great.

[u/ughaibu]

That is a docufuckingmentary, fantastic! For anyone who doesn't get the soubriquet John Steed, 'ere ya go.