LONDON — A British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates more than six months ago appeared in a video Wednesday appealing to the new U.K. government to secure their release.
Paul and Rachel Chandler were kidnapped Oct. 23 when pirates seized their yacht in the Indian Ocean as they sailed toward Tanzania.
In the newly disclosed video, the couple pleaded for help from Prime Minister David Cameron.
“As the new prime minister, we desperately need him to make a definitive public statement of the government’s attitude to us,” Paul Chandler, 60, said in the video, which Britain’s Channel 4 said was filmed a week ago by a Somali reporter.
“If the government is not prepared to help, then they must say so because the gangsters’ expectations and hopes have been raised by the thought of a new government, (that) there might be a different approach,” Chandler said.
The pirates have demanded a $7 million ransom. Britain’s Foreign Office said the policy against paying ransoms has not changed.
Pirates have held the Chandlers in a Somalia town but recently fled into a forest after an attempt by an al-Qaeda-linked militant group to seize pirate strongholds. The pirates have threatened to abandon the couple if militants close in. They said the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group offered to pay $1.8 million for the Chandlers.
