Captive

If you're out there and if you've got a pleasant wind...

there's nothing better.

You can be in the tropical ocean,

the deep blue water, and you know it's...

five or six miles deep beneath you.

I wanted to see Madagascar, and Dar es Salaam, and Zanzibar

and all the places I remember from school in the '50s

with exciting names.

We've been together 35 years.

We decided not to have kids.

Out on the open sea,

that is for me when I feel my most free.

When we're passage-making,

one of us needs to be on watch,

keeping a good lookout.

Paul had gone off at midnight. I was on deck,

thinking about life, the universe, everything.

I heard a small boat approaching fast.

I realized that it was something horrible.

I've never had guns pointed at me before.

Desperately trying to think through, "What can I do?"

It was half past 6:00 in the morning.

I assumed when a call came at that time of day

that it was bad news.

I jumped out of bed and grabbed the phone.

I was very surprised to find my younger sister on the end.

She told me that the beacon had gone off on the boat.

Of course, my instant reaction was that the boat had been hit by a ship.

And there was little hope, in the middle of the ocean,

of finding anybody.

The kidnap and ransom market in London is probably the biggest

in the world.

By late autumn 2009,

what we were seeing was waves of attacks in the Indian Ocean

on primarily commercial vessels.

There was a story very quickly going around that there was a yacht

where the, um, emergency beacon, as it's called, had gone off.

And I remember getting a call from one of my contacts from Somalia

saying that the news here on the streets says that a yacht has been taken

and it has two UK nationals on board.

They started harassing us,

making us give them money and jewelry and so on.

We thought that it was just a matter of hours or days,

and they would go off, leave us.

But then the leader, he said his name was Buggas.

He said, "You motor sail boat back to Somalia."

I was very frightened.

Coastguard's searching for a British couple

feared kidnapped by Somali pirates,

are investigating a possible sighting of their boat.

There was a phone call out of the blue

into the newsroom to the UK bureau.

A British couple have been taken hostage by Somali pirates.

Right, okay. So, calls to the MOD, calls to the Foreign Office.

"No, don't know anything about it. Don't know what you're talking about."

We needed to find the family

and try to confirm the story from this tip-off from Mogadishu.

We got hold of the pirates' number through local journalists and contacts in Somalia.

Good evening. Down a crackling phone line to the lawless coast of Somalia,

News at Ten has made the first contact

with the British couple kidnapped by pirates.

It was a massive story for us. It was a world exclusive.

They were...

an ordinary couple, if that's the right word.

They were from Tunbridge Wells.

That's the epitome of middle England, isn't it?

They're living the dream, and they wake up in a nightmare.

Have your hostage takers demanded any ransom?

That was our first contact with the world since we'd been attacked.

And it was very reassuring to know...

that the outside world knew something about our position.

They must have known that we were in pirates' hands.

- A couple from Kent... - A couple feared captured by...

A gang of pirates...

And I thought maybe, um, there was hope for us then.

A ransom demand for their release is expected any day now.

We had this phone call to say

ITN had got somebody on Paul's father's doorstep.

He was 98. He was stone-deaf.

I straightaway rang ITN and said,

"Whatever you do, do not knock on Paul's father's door.

But, you know, if you want, I'll come down."

I'm a retired farmer.

To be dragged into this whirlwind of traveling up to London,

dragged out of our shell in the country.

It's all so dirty...

and so crowded.

My world was turned upside down.

I didn't sleep a lot.

Very, very worried that Paul and Rachel wouldn't get back home.

Paul is my uncle,

and he's the only uncle I've got. Well, my favorite uncle.

He's the uncle that I first went on a motorbike with,

and I've never ever been on the back of a motorbike since!

Yeah, I love my uncle to bits. Yeah.

We're not very close with Rachel's family. Not very close at all.

I hadn't seen Rachel's family for at least 30 years.

Since their wedding.

They hadn't seen each other, let alone our side of the family,

for quite a few years.

The challenges were to get to know each other

as two separate families becoming one.

But also, I think, for their side of the family,

it was getting to know each other as well.

When you're in that situation, you don't focus on anything else but the priority.

And the priority was to get Paul and Rachel home safely...

any way we could.

I knew that Somalia is a lawless country.

And the thought of being taken inland was horrific.

It was just a big unknown, a frightening unknown.

What was going to happen to us?

Any rescue effort would be risky.

In April, a French military operation to free a yacht hijacked by Somali pirates

resulted in the death of one of the hostages.

It took seven hours of trying to make contact,

but we managed to get through to the Chandlers

and made sure that Rachel had a chance to speak to her brother.

We think of you all the time.

I'm sure you do. Please, try not to worry about us.

We're working to persuade the people that are releasing you.

We're appealing to their compassionate nature.

We know and you know that you're blameless tourists,

and, you know, you have nothing of value to them.

That's right.

- We love you. - I know. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

He and I have always been good friends...

but, um, not what you would call very, very close.

In that, um, I'm not especially close to any of my family.

But close enough...

I knew that Stephen would do whatever he could.

Stephen had no idea, clearly...

what he needed to do.

Just as we were in the deep end, he was in the deep end.

As far as I was concerned,

I thought getting the story out to the world was a good thing.

I'd assumed that these pirates would realize

that a couple old English sailors weren't worth anything.

Of course, I was very wrong.

They're looking for anything which will increase the value of their hostages.

And publicity does that, dramatically.

The worst thing about being captive

is that you don't know what's planned for you.

You just have to exist.

Hour to hour, day to day.

And I thought I can't even survive a few weeks like this.

I was beginning to feel angry.

I thought, "Well, why aren't negotiations happening?"

It's what everyone was dreading. The ransom demand.

And it is a shockingly high starting figure. $7 million.

Paul and Rachel Chandler from Tunbridge Wells,

were taken hostage a week ago.

We asked Rachel's brother what's now likely to be on their minds.

I would suspect how they're going to raise the money to pay for ransom.

It was quite clear from the early stages there was this mismatch

about the perceived value that the pirates had in their hostages.

They had persuaded themselves that these were people

who were going to make them millions in ransom,

That clearly wasn't going to be the case.

Our position is absolutely clear.

The British government never makes substantive concessions to hostage-takers.

We do not pay, the government do not pay ransoms.

Because, of course, if we did that,

there would be a risk that many more hostages would be taken in the future.

It's not always an easy line. It can be very painful.

There's no attempt to try to prevent the family doing what it needs to do

to get someone released.

But it's not something that the government can get involved in.

We had a meeting with the Foreign Office,

and that was one of the most uncomfortable meetings.

They sat there as a very smug bunch.

We learned very quickly

that we're not going to get an awful lot from them.

At that stage, when Paul and Rachel were hijacked,

we'd already resolved probably 20 or 30 Somali hijacking cases,

so we had the expertise to deal with it.

We said very clearly, "We'll help if you want our help,

but our involvement was to be confidential,

and we don't want to be paid."

We were very frank. We said, "Look, you have...

basically, a short list of options to choose from.

You know, you can refuse to negotiate.

But actually, that's probably not a viable solution.

You can negotiate, but refuse to pay.

In Somalia, as a Muslim country,

it has been tried, you know, you ask an imam to intervene,

explain to the kidnappers that it's haram, it's forbidden under Islamic law.

But it's never worked.

Then the last option is to negotiate and pay a ransom.

And it's not a very appealing option.

But as a family where you have your loved ones in harm's way,

um, you have a short list of unappealing options to select from.

And you have to select one.

- Hello. - Hello? Hello, Ali?

- Can you hear me? - Yeah, I can hear you.

Good. Good.

I have to make it clear that I am the head of the family.

I am the only person who can bring a solution.

Okay.

We cannot negotiate in millions.