Nigerian Army Frees Kidnapped French Sailor A French sailor was freed on Tuesday after being captured by pirates last week from his ship off the coast of Togo and taken to Nigeria, a military commander said. Pirates attacked the oil products tanker Adour on June 13, around 30 nautical miles off the coast of Togo. General Bata Dembiro, a commander in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta region, said the Nigerian navy and French marines stormed the vessel after the hijackers seized it, but they took Benjamin Elan hostage to enable them to escape. They released the other 14 crew, he said. The rescued foreign ship worker was abducted in Togo aboard an oil tanker and brought to Bayelsa State (in Nigeria) by suspected kidnappers. The pirates took the Frenchman to a small village in Bayelsa State in the delta, but youths from the local community alerted the authorities, enabling them to mount a rescue operation. The gang had fled before they arrived in the house, he said. The shipping company in charge of the boat, ST Management SAAM, declined to comment except to confirm that there had been an incident with the Adour. Pirate attacks off West Africa’s mineral-rich Gulf of Guinea have almost doubled from last year and threaten to jeopardize the shipping of commodities from the region. say.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:59:06 +0000
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