Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
317-405)
Rachel Chandler and Paul Chandler
24 October 2011
Q317 Chair: I welcome members
of the public to the fourth evidence session of the Committee's
inquiry into piracy off the coast of Somalia. The purpose of the
session is to obtain evidence from Mr and Mrs Chandler, who experienced
Somali piracy first hand.
As a fellow yachtsman, I welcome you to the
Committee. Is there anything you would like to say by way of an
opening statement, or should we go straight into questions?
Paul Chandler: Thank you for your
welcome. We are happy to go straight into questions.
Q318 Chair: Thank you. May I say
to members of the public and the media that after the first seven
or eight questions, or the first few groups of questions, we will
be going into a private session? That is because a British hostage
is still being held in Somalia at the moment, and we have no wish
to inflame the situation if exaggerated stories were to come out
of the session. As and when that hostage is released, we will
put the transcript into the public domain.
Mr and Mrs Chandler, you were hijacked, or captured,
less than 24 hours after leaving the Seychelles. Had it crossed
your mind that there was a risk? Had you taken any advice on what
could happen?
Rachel Chandler: Before we left
the Seychelles, we consulted all our usual sources of information
about the route we were taking. We spoke to fellow yachtsmen who
had been on that route, and to other yachtsmen who had taken that
trip in the weeks before. There was one yacht which even left
the day before, and none of us anticipated that there was a high
risk of piracy at that time on that route.
On the day we left, we went through all the
normal formalities—harbour master, customs, immigration
and coastguard—and at no time did they issue any warning
to us. I think they simply didn't know that that group of pirates
were there at the time; otherwise, why didn't they warn us, or
why wasn't the coastguard out there tracking them down and heading
them off?
Q319 Chair: Did your insurers
give you any advice?
Paul Chandler: We notified our
insurers of our route on a regular basis and they were aware of
our exact intended route, including that our next port of call
would have been Tanga in Tanzania. They accepted it and carried
on the insurance as per normal.
Q320 Chair: Is there any piece
of equipment or advice, with hindsight, that you could have had
that would have been useful?
Rachel Chandler: There is nothing
a small yacht can do to prevent robbery and attack from pirates
in fast skiffs, armed with AK47s, rocket launchers, or whatever.
We do not have the speed. As a British-flagged vessel, of course,
we are not able to carry arms. It is not legal to do so. Paul
and I are not trained to use arms, so it is not something that
is credible anyway.
Q321 Chair:
You said that no information was made available by the Foreign
Office. Were you looking for information from the Foreign Office?
Did you look at its website at the time or anything like that?
Paul Chandler: Yes, we did. We
did considerable research in this country a month or six weeks
beforehand. But while we were in the Seychelles we continued.
There is one thing that we would have benefited from and that
is a low bandwidth source of information. A lot is provided on
the internet now. You say looking at the Foreign Office website;
well, when you go into the best internet café in the Seychelles,
which is run by Cable & Wireless, you think if Google's homepage
loads in 40 seconds, it is worth staying on and slogging away
for a few hours. Otherwise, you just give up. Communications in
a lot of the world are not as good as we are used to here. So
when I say low-tech, meaning low bandwidth, information, for example,
hurricane and cyclone warnings are made available on the internet
in text-only form, which can be downloaded in a matter of microseconds,
even over a mobile phone link. Whereas for the websites which
give piracy information, you have to wade through the usual click
here, look at all these beautiful pictures and so on, and it is
very difficult. It was very difficult at that time to keep up
to date on information.
Q322 Chair: So it is not a user-friendly
website for people who are overseas, basically, in fairly remote
locations such as the area of piracy.
Rachel Chandler: It has improved
in the last two years, certainly the NATO website has.
Q323 Chair: Since you were captured?
Rachel Chandler: Since we were
captured, yes.
Q324 Chair: What is your reaction
to the comment by the Seychelles tourist board that you did receive
a piracy warning? Were they putting out warnings at all?
Paul Chandler: It was not true.
They rather shot themselves in the foot by claiming that we would
have been warned by the marina that we were staying in, which
in fact we had never visited.
Q325 Chair: There are people who
say, "Well, you take the risk upon yourselves by going through
areas like this." To what extent should governments be responsible
for incidents like this?
Rachel Chandler: Wherever you
travel in the world and whatever you do anywhere, you face risks.
The risks we faced where we were at the time, given the information
that we had, were no greater than the risks one faced travelling
in many parts of the world. That said, there are limits to what
anybody can expect governments to be able to do to prevent crime.
But I see it as a fundamental role of government, wherever they
are, to do their best to prevent crime. We do not blame the Seychelles
government for what happened to us. They are victims of the piracy
as much as any of us are. Obviously we expect them to do their
best to limit it, as one expects all nations of the world who
have an interest in international trade to do.
Q326 Sir John Stanley: Good afternoon.
Can we just be clear on one point? Did you access the Foreign
Office's travel advice for the Seychelles before you left? The
letter we have had from the Foreign Office Minister Henry Bellingham
starts: "The FCO travel advice for the Seychelles before
the kidnapping contained the following warning: 'reports of the
hijacking of vessels by Somali pirates in the northern and western
fringes of Seychelles exclusive economic zone waters; for example
near Assumption Island'." Did you access that FCO travel
advice or did you, for the technical reasons you have explained—the
length of time it would have taken you to access it—basically
give up on trying to access it? Did you or did you not access
it?
Rachel Chandler: We were not heading
to the north-west of the Seychelles, which is where it says it
was reporting a problem. I do not recall seeing that advice.
Q327 Sir John Stanley: Do you
remember accessing any FCO travel advice before you left the Seychelles,
or, because of the technical reasons, did you give up trying?
Rachel Chandler: I do not recall
accessing it in the run-up to leaving the Seychelles. I accessed
it during September, when we were back in the UK.
Q328 Sir John
Stanley: If you accessed what has been stated here, did that
leave you with any concerns as to whether you should attempt this
particular journey to Tanzania?
Rachel Chandler: I do not recall
seeing that advice and being aware that, at the time—in
September—there were warnings to the north-west of the Seychelles,
but I should repeat that we were heading to the south-west of
the Seychelles, not the north-west.
Q329 Sir John
Stanley: Do you feel, with the benefit of hindsight, that
the British Foreign Office did all it reasonably could to warn
you, or do you feel that in terms of travel advice and warning
it let you down?
Paul Chandler: If the report that
you have quoted from was available on the Foreign Office website,
it would have been most appropriate for it to make it available
in the harbourmaster's office at Port Victoria, or with some authorities
there saying, "Hang on. Should you ring the British H igh
Commission?" or something like that. If it put it on its
website and relied on us to find it, it is asking a bit much,
given the technical problems of communication that I have mentioned.
Q330 Sir John
Stanley: When you were in the Seychelles, were you in touch
with the British High Commission?
Rachel Chandler: We were registered
on the LOCATE system, so we did what we felt was appropriate.
Q331 Sir John
Stanley: Did they know in the British High Commission of your
intended journey to Tanzania?
Rachel Chandler: No, they didn't
invite us to tell them our travel plans to that extent.
Q332 Sir John
Stanley: So you simply registered as visiting yachtspeople.
Rachel Chandler: In the Seychelles,
yes.
Q333 Sir John
Stanley: Right, and are you satisfied that, having merely
registered—having not made contact—it wasn't really
a matter for the British High Commission officials to warn you?
Or do you think, knowing the travel advice for that particular
part of the world, that the British High Commission should have
taken steps to get in touch with you?
Paul Chandler: If they were concerned,
if they thought there was a risk and they knew there were sailors
in Port Victoria who were departing—people were departing
every day—I think they should have informed the harbourmaster,
the immigration authorities, the customs authorities or the coastguard,
all of whom we checked out with. I would have thought that if
there was a problem, they would have been aware of it.
Q334 Sir John
Stanley: Lastly, if you had seen the text of the Foreign Office
travel advice that the Minister has given to us—if you had
picked it up on the website, or if the British High Commission
in the Seychelles had told you about it—do you think you
would have said, "Well, it's not really in the area we're
going to so we'll take the risk," or "No, we aren't
going to chance our arm"?
Rachel Chandler: If there was
advice that had suggested that sailing south-west from the Seychelles
to the Amirante Islands and on to Tanzania was high risk from
the point of view of a piracy attack, we would not have gone.
Sir John Stanley: Thank you.
Q335 Mr Ainsworth: It is good
to see you alive, and safe and well. I was the Defence Secretary
at the time of your capture, Mr and Mrs Chandler, so it really
is very good to see you here.
I have some questions that I want to ask you
in the private session, but just for the avoidance of doubt: with
your evidence we've been provided with a map[1]
that seems to indicate—I want this not to cause any difficulties—that
you left Mahe and sailed west-north-west. Is that just an error
on the map? You said your intention was to sail south-west. What
was your actual direction, having left?
Paul Chandler: The map is correct.
We were heading approximately south-west towards one of the Amirante
islands, but unfortunately that day the wind came from the south-west,
so we had to go at approximately 45° to that, either more
or less due west or more or less due south. From the weather forecast,
the wind was forecast to veer, so we thought we would head on
the westerly heading and then later on we would tack and turn
south. At the point where we were attacked, we were perhaps 15
miles further north than we would ideally have been, but the map
shows the correct position.
Q336 Mr Ainsworth: It was not
your intention to travel north-west; your intention was to travel
south-west.
Rachel Chandler: We were about
to revert to our original intended course at the time of the attack,
because the wind had dropped.
Chair: It is the yachtsman's curse; it
always comes from the direction you want to go in.
Q337 Mr Ainsworth:
We landlubbers struggle to understand such difficulties.
Q338 Mr Watts: Just to be absolutely
clear, before you left on this trip you had planned it. You contacted
your insurance company and it knew the route that you were taking.
You received no advice that there was any danger whatever, and
it raised no issues with you over that route.
Did you check the Foreign Office advice at that
stage and, if you did, what was the advice given prior to September?
Even if you did not, you must know what it is now, because you
must know what you should have had.
Rachel Chandler: As far as I recall,
there was no advice for sailing from the Seychelles on the Foreign
Office website that would have suggested that sailing between
the Seychelles and Tanzania was at high risk of piracy attack.
Q339 Mr Watts: You deliberately
checked. You went online and checked it out.
Rachel Chandler: I regularly check
the Foreign Office website for advice on countries in the area
that we travel in.
Q340 Mr Watts: Have you managed
to secure a copy of any advice now that you are back? I would
think you would have checked.
Rachel Chandler: Yes.
Q341 Mr Watts: As far as you
know, there is still no advice there. If there was information,
it would not have been helpful—
Rachel Chandler: There is very
clear advice now.
Q342 Mr Watts: Do you know what
advice was given prior to September, before your capture?
Rachel Chandler: Before our capture,
as far as I know, there was no advice to cruising yachts that
said, "Do not sail" either in the Seychelles or from
the Seychelles in the direction that we were heading. Obviously,
there was advice relating to Somalia and the coast of Somalia.
Q343 Mr Roy: Henry Bellingham,
the Foreign Office Minister, has stated: "FCO Consular staff
remained in close touch with Paul and Rachel's family throughout
their ordeal and the family attended meetings in the FCO to meet
operational staff, and to link by Video Telephone Conference with
the British High Commission in Nairobi." Do you believe that
the Foreign Office did all that it could, and is there anything
that it could have done for the family that it did not?
Paul Chandler: There is a great
deal it could have done in terms of importance, but the first
thing I would like to say, if I may, is that I do not think that
the Foreign Office was the appropriate agency to be in the lead
in this matter. It contacted the family essentially four days
after the news was out in the public domain.[2]
In those four days, the family were bewildered, uncertain and
unadvised. Perhaps "hounded" is not the right word,
but the press and the media were pressing them for information
and comment.
To my mind, the Foreign Office could and should
have done three things: it should have advised the family at the
earliest possible moment about the general situation in Somalia
and the position of kidnapping of hostages for ransom. It should
have advised the family not to speak to the media, because it
was well known at that stage, and it is well admitted by the media,
that by far the best thing for hostages is a press blackout. If
our family had been advised of that by the Foreign Office early,
it would perhaps have had significant beneficial consequences.
It could have been open with the family and said, "We can't
help." We did not expect help, from our position in Somalia,
because we know there is, essentially, no political way into a
failed state; there were no political levers. The Foreign Office
could have told the family, "We can't help practically. We
can't help because of policy. But here's a man who can help. You
need help. The private sector can help. Perhaps you should contact
these people."
Q344 Mr Roy: So you are saying
that the FCO should not have been in the lead? Who should have
been?
Paul Chandler: In my opinion,
the lead organisation should be the one with the best expertise.
As I understand it, expertise in criminal kidnapping rests with
the police rather than the Foreign Office. Given that the Foreign
Office does not directly have that expertise, it was not provided
at the level it should have been.
Q345 Ann Clwyd: It is good to
see you in the flesh. You must have had a dreadful ordeal. I am
wondering why you have decided to go so public. Is it because
you want lessons learned? Do you think that is important in case
anybody else is in the same situation as yourselves?
Rachel Chandler: You mean in terms
of writing the book about what happened? It was for a number of
reasons: one, to set the record straight; two, to get it off our
chests. The third one I have forgotten, but it is essentially
about telling people how it is possible to survive such an ordeal
if nothing else. Hopefully, it is also about inspiring them to
know that ordinary people can come through something like this.
Q346 Ann Clwyd: Do you feel particularly
angry with the Foreign Office?
Paul Chandler: No. My criticism—I
suppose it is mainly me who has voiced it—is not really
about the Foreign Office or its individuals, at least not seriously;
it is disappointment at the fact that the wrong agency was put
in charge. That was a worry for me at the time, in Somalia, and
I said as much in one of my phone calls to Rachel's brother. I
said, "For goodness' sake, talk to the police, not the FCO."
I am not being critical of the FCO in making that comment. If
you want to know about criminal kidnapping, why would you go to
the FCO? I know there has to be a lead in these things in government,
but I think, and the family have said, that if things had been
the other way around between the organisations, they would have
had much more practical support and help in being, essentially,
the victims of extortion. We were just the hostages; our family
were the victims of extortion.
Q347 Ann Clwyd: But you do feel
that the Foreign Office response was derisory—I think you
say that somewhere in one of your statements. Did you mean for
your family, yourselves or both?
Paul Chandler: For our family.
Rachel Chandler: What the Foreign
Office did provide was, essentially, tea and sympathy. In doing
so, I think it rubbed our family up the wrong way. In some sense,
its attempts to placate our family just did not work.
Q348 Mr Roy: In your written evidence
to us, you tell us that some of the pirates who took part in hijacking
your yacht were arrested doing the same thing later on to another
yacht, and they are currently on trial in Mombasa. You said, "The
Metropolitan Police are investigating the possibility that they
may also be tried for their part in the attack on Lynn Rival.
We have been told by the Met that there is ample evidence, but
jurisdiction remains to be negotiated." Could you tell us
exactly what you mean by "jurisdiction remains to be negotiated"?
Paul Chandler: At the time we
made that written evidence submission, the department of the Metropolitan
Police that had been collecting evidence and putting the case
together informed us that it was in talks with the Kenyan authorities
and the British authorities as to how it might be processed, and
they reached some sort of tentative agreement. They have told
us since then that they have provided a file to the Crown Prosecution
Service, which now has to decide whether to take the matter further.
But I gather there is a problem about whether you carry out a
trial in Kenya jointly with the Kenyan authorities; whether the
Kenyan authorities provide a facility for British authorities
to do it; or whether they are handed over to the British authorities
and taken to a British territory for trial. I do not know the
detail, but I gather that was what had to be resolved.
Q349 Mr Roy: Are you at all worried
that there is resistance from the Kenyan side to handing the pirates
over?
Paul Chandler: I do not think
so.
Rachel Chandler: No, they are
on trial for the attack on the Cap Saint Vincent, the French trawler,
and we are happy for due process to occur. Then the question is
whether they can be brought to trial for our attack on top of
it.
Q350 Mr Roy: On the point about
your own attack, would you like to see the pirates prosecuted
in the United Kingdom and, if so, would you be willing to give
evidence in the United Kingdom?
Paul Chandler: Yes, I would like
to see them prosecuted by the United Kingdom—not necessarily
physically in the UK—and yes, we would be happy to give
evidence.
Q351 Chair: When this is over,
I read that you are going to set sail again and go off again.
It is not a case of once bitten, twice shy?
Rachel Chandler: No. Cruising
is our chosen lifestyle, and we want to continue cruising for
as long as we are able to. We are certainly not defeated by what
happened to us.
Chair: Thank you. I now propose that
we move into a private evidence session.
Resolved, That
the Committee should sit in private. The witnesses gave oral evidence.
Asterisks denote that part of the oral evidence which has not
been reported at the request of the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office and with the agreement of the Committee.
Chair: Thank you very much. I would
like to think that you two, more than anybody, will understand
why we have had to go into private session now.
Q352 Mr Ainsworth: I was very
interested—more than most—in your comments about your
views on the rules of engagement and what should have happened
at sea at the time of your transfer to the container ship from
the Lynn Rival. You indicate that despite the fact that you had
been forced to say that the ship should back off, you do not believe
that. You did not believe it at the time and you do not believe
it now; it should not have done, and some enforcement action should
have been taken. I want just to try and tease that out and get
your views on it. Is it about a specific, or is it a generality
about rules of engagement?
Paul Chandler: It is a generality.
I feel very strongly that the lives of two people should not be
weighed so highly in the equation, which is why I use the term
enforcement rather than hostage rescue. I do not expect the might
of the British Government to rescue me. As Rachel said, we did
not blame anybody for what happened to us. We did not expect anybody
to go beyond reasonable efforts to try to rescue us.
Q353 Mr Ainsworth:
The Wave Knight is not a warship; it is part of the Royal Fleet
Auxiliary. As you know, that means that there are no heavy calibre
weapons and no helicopter. There was no element of surprise, because
the Wave Knight had been trying to delay that container ship,
so that you could not be transferred to it. The pirates were fully
aware of where it was and that it had been trying to interdict
them for some time. In those circumstances, what do you think
should have been done? There was a detachment of Royal Marines
on board, but there were considerable numbers of armed pirates
on board the container ship.
Paul Chandler: It is not for us
to say what military plans should be carried out. The decision
that leads to the fact that it needs to be carried out by special
forces rather than Marines, in order to minimise the risks to
our lives, is what I think is the wrong one.
Q354 Mr Ainsworth:
I understand what you are saying, but I am trying to clarify this,
because the Royal Navy were pretty heavily attacked at the time
in the press, and since.
Rachel Chandler: We regret that.
Q355 Mr Ainsworth:
If Marines were to mount an attack on alert pirates on board a
container ship that was heavily armoured, it might not only have
been your lives that were at risk. I have no idea how they would
have gone about that. I cannot think how they would have done
it, other than to try to board that ship by skiff or something
like that. It might have been them who were annihilated in the
process.
Paul Chandler: I do not think
they would have been that foolish.
Rachel Chandler: In my mind, the
time to mount an attempt to rescue us would have been between
the time when the seven pirates went off to attack the French
trawler—we were then discovered by the helicopter from the
Spanish warship—and approached the following morning—
Q356 Mr Ainsworth:
This was after you had been transferred to the container ship.
Rachel Chandler: No, this was
before. This was on the evening of the fifth day. The Spanish
helicopter found us when it overflew. We had just three pirates
left on board at that time. The following morning there was the
German warship—the Karlsruhe. In my naive mind at the time,
I thought it was the time for a rescue attempt. I do not know
where the Marines or the Wave Knight were in relation to Lynn
Rival at the time before we got to the Kota Wajar, but that would
have been the time to attempt a rescue of us, in my mind. Once
we got to the Kota Wajar and were in the process of being transferred—I
fully accept that the Kota Wajar was full of pirates and hostages
and a Singaporean-flagged ship—no way was a rescue going
to happen.
Q357 Mr Ainsworth:
Having cleared that up, can I ask one other question? It was not
clear from your evidence that that was what you were suggesting.
What was the pirates' reaction at the time that the Wave Knight
was in close proximity? What was their reaction to the potential
of a rescue?
Paul Chandler: I would say that
they were nervous, but they were not frightened, if you understand
what I mean. They did not think that they were going to be attacked,
but they were nervous, because they are not used to being faced
by people with guns. Warning shots were being fired and there
were exchanges of searchlight beams, but they were not thinking,
"We are going to have to fight here." You can read something
into the fact that they were standing on the deck of Kota Wajar
firing AK47s at a warship.
Rachel Chandler: Well, the Wave
Knight.
Paul Chandler: Well, they would
see it as a warship; it is big and grey. They were reasonably
confident that they were not going to be attacked.
Q358 Mr Ainsworth:
So you got a sense that they knew what the game was and that they
were going to be able to carry on their business.
Paul Chandler: Yes, but when there
were only three of them on Lynn Rival and the two of us, they
were nervous and frightened.
Rachel Chandler: After the helicopter
had overflown, and when in the morning the warship was obvious,
they were incredibly nervous—they were beside themselves.
Mr Ainsworth: There were people en route.
Rachel Chandler: They realised
that there was a serious threat and risk that a rescue attempt
could happen.
Q359 Sir John Stanley: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q360 Sir John Stanley: Are you saying
to the Committee that the Foreign Office played no part whatever
in facilitating the settlement?
Paul Chandler: Absolutely. It
was, however, prepared to help after our release. It wasn't even
prepared to contribute anything—not that it could have done,
perhaps—to getting us out, once a deal had been done, but
once we landed on safe soil in Nairobi, it was wonderful. [Interruption.]
I mean it. I mean that sincerely.
Q361 Sir John Stanley: Do you
think that the Foreign Office comprehensive stand-off, as far
as you were concerned, was due to Government policy of not negotiating
release of money to hostage takers, or do you believe that the
Foreign Office policy was due to a sense of inadequacy as to its
ability to influence the situation your way? What do you attribute
the Foreign Office stand-off position to?
Rachel Chandler: I assume that
it was due to a strong interpretation of the policy that it does
not negotiate or facilitate negotiations with kidnappers. I hope
that it was not due to total incompetence. My feeling is that,
as Paul said earlier in response to the question about assistance
to our family, it would help in hostage situations if the Foreign
Office were able to assist with the initial crisis management
that a family needs. If it is private individuals, a family needs
to be able to organise itself to deal with the crisis. If it does
not, and it flounders, the situation just worsens and the outcome
is likely to be more expensive.
Q362 Sir John
Stanley: As we know, other governments such as the French
and Italian governments take a very different position. Obviously,
I am familiar with the public position of the British Government,
particularly when we had to face the series of kidnappings in
Beirut some time ago. Do you think that if the Foreign Office
had been proactive, your release could have been secured more
quickly and conceivably less expensively for you personally?
Paul Chandler: I certainly think
that if they had advised our family to shut up and not speak to
the press on day one, it might have shortened our period in captivity.
The commercial aspect of this is that both sides in the usual
piracy situation expect to follow a process and negotiate a settlement,
and I think the pirates are wedded to that. In a kidnapping situation
where you have not chosen your target—you don't know that
it's the daughter of a wealthy tycoon; it's just a random selection—when
you think that you have got as much money as you are likely to
get, you are going to settle. The period it took to get to that
was possibly considerably delayed by the media interest engendered
in the first few days.
Q363 Sir John Stanley: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q364 Chair: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q365 Mr Watts: Can you describe
the structure and nature of the pirate group you were engaged
with, and tell us whether you had any contact with senior investors
or pirate groups within the groups that you met? Did you come
into contact with the main players, or were you dealing with people
lower down the food chain?
Paul Chandler: That is a good
question and we can answer only on the basis of our experience
in our meetings and our reading of the situation over quite a
long time. In our case, it seems that there were not any big players.
There was a man who led the attack on us, and right throughout
the 13 months there was a sense, which got stronger, that he was
the man making the decisions and that it was he who in the end
had to decide to release us. There were two or three people—two
in particular—who were sort of mentoring him although they
did not outrank him. They visited the site occasionally; it was
almost as if they were buddies. Perhaps they each had 12 loyal
men because it needed 30 or 35 to guard us over that long period;
perhaps it was the coming together of three groups.
Two translator-negotiators were brought in to
deal with our family and I almost got the sense that they were
hired in—it was almost like office services being outsourced.
They had a certain authority when it came to telling the gangs
to look after us and give us water, batteries for the radio and
whatever. There was no sense, however, that they had the authority
to influence vital decision making. My reading of the situation
was of a gang of 30 to 35 people, and a leader who was this bully
called Buggas. If there were financiers behind that, they were
very low key and not involved in decision making. I could be completely
wrong, but I strongly have that sense. That may not be representative
of the piracy position as you move around to Puntland, towards
the Gulf of Aden. It may be that they were just a group thinking,
"Oh, we can do that too", and they got enough together
to form a group and go out.
Q366 Mr Watts: We have heard from
previous witnesses that the groups tend to be democratic, in the
sense that there is no leader. Was it your sense that although
there was obviously someone in charge of the attack and the capture,
major decisions were taken by the group? Or were they taken by
the one person?
Paul Chandler: One person, but
he had to satisfy the group.
Q367 Mr Watts: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q368 Mr Watts: Can I ask you a
question that relates to questions put by some of my colleagues
earlier? It seems that you think that perhaps the Foreign Office
are not the best people to deal with this and that the police
have more understanding about ransom. Then you are not quite sure
whether the Navy are the right group of people, if you are going
to intercede; you are not quite sure if there should be special
forces. On the ransom side of it, you are saying that the local
guy was able to be more effective. That is a fairly damning indictment
of British policy, in the sense that what you are saying virtually
is that the whole structure for dealing with this is wrong and
it needs to be thought out again. Am I putting words in your mouth
when I say that?
Paul Chandler: Well you are, but
yes, I do think that.
Rachel Chandler: The whole situation
is such a mess. The Somalis are in a Catch-22 situation, whereby
you have the lawlessness on land so you have the thriving piracy.
You will not be able to do anything to stop the lawlessness on
land unless you contain the piracy, because the pirates rule on
land—essentially, the militias are being funded through
the piracy. There is no easy solution and policy has to be directed
at finding ways forward and improvements in the situation. On
the one hand, there must be containing of the piracy and strengthening
or improving what our Navy is trying to do in collaboration with
all the other navies out there that are trying to do something.
Of course, one aspect of that is building up the coastguard and
the local efforts to contain the piracy, to protect all the different
countries in the region that are affected by it. But you also
have to have the carrot aspect, trying to help the Somali people
who want to improve their security and have more peace and prospects,
because at the moment their situation is just so hopeless. It
is a question of tackling it on many different fronts. It is not
obvious that there is a holistic approach in British Government
policy or, indeed, in UN policy.
Q369 Mr Watts: Many people might
take the view that the Foreign Office and the British Government
should tell or advise private citizens not to go anywhere within
the catchment area where there may be a problem, that that advice
should be given to everyone, and that insurers should be forced
to make the same sort of representation. Is that something that
you would endorse? If not, why not? It was a terrifying event
for you, but, frankly, an awful lot of resources, time and effort
are going into allowing people to cruise in areas that are not
safe.
Paul Chandler: It is very difficult
to go down the route of blacklisting countries. We visited countries
and when we were in Yemen, we went up to Sana'a, and a month after
we were there, the Foreign Office moved it up one level and said,
"Don't go to Yemen, if you can possibly avoid doing so."
It is very difficult when there are no grey areas and you move
it up into an area. What is the traveller to do? A lot of the
world would be in that category. For example, the recent Foreign
Office advice on sailing in the Seychelles was not to go beyond
30 miles. That is nonsense. Are we to assume that if you are 29
miles out you are hunky-dory and it's fine, but that if you are
31 miles out you are going to get attacked? Or are you to assume
that if you are attacked, wherever you are, the Navy will come
to rescue you if you are only 29 miles out? It is nonsense and
it is very difficult to know how it could be otherwise. I think
that the best thing is for the Foreign Office to be as honest
as it can in reporting facts in particular and in giving advice.
Chair: A ship was recently snatched two
miles off the coast of Yemen.
Q370 Mike Gapes: In paragraph
27 of your written submission to us, you say that the issue was
handled by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office "as a counter-terrorism
matter, rather than criminal kidnapping." Why do you think
that was?
Rachel Chandler: I think you have
to ask the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, because to us, we
were kidnapped by Somali pirates and all they want is money. That
is their mantra—"All we want is money." So to
us, it was criminal kidnapping.
Q371 Mike Gapes: In the time that
you were captured and held, did you have any evidence of any relationship
or interaction between the pirates and, for example, the al-Shabab
group or any other terrorist groups?
Paul Chandler: They were frightened
of al-Shabab and they did not like them, because they did not
like the discipline that al-Shabab would have imposed. I would
not say that they were scared of a fight with them, but they seemed
occasionally to be worried that al-Shabab would come and seize
us.
Q372 Mike Gapes: Is that because
they thought that al-Shabab would then release you, or because
al-Shabab would take the money by becoming your captors and hostage
takers?
Rachel Chandler: They did not
want to lose their prize—simple as that.
Q373 Mike Gapes: We have been
told that al-Shabab is strongly against piracy as a whole and
that it has a religious and moral code that says it is wrong.
Rachel Chandler: But they don't
do much to stop kidnapping, do they?
Q374 Mike Gapes: Do you think
that the people you were with had any contact with people in al-Shabab,
or were they just afraid of them in the sense that they were a
potential threat to them?
Paul Chandler: They were very
aware of al-Shabab and of the boundaries. They occupied a zone
of central Somalia, whereas al-Shabab controlled the south to
a greater or lesser extent and would occasionally make forays
into the central area. I suspect that al-Shabab takes a rake-off
from the piracy operations and stays out of that area; it is a
sort of informal arrangement, because, as we have seen, al-Shabab
is not powerful enough to control the areas that it occupies.
Q375 Mike Gapes: That is just
your impression; you have no evidence for that?
Paul Chandler: No evidence. Certainly,
the guys in the gang did not like the idea of going to fight with
or against al-Shabab.
Q376 Mike Gapes: You had no contact
with anyone in the time that you were there who you might think
was a link to or associated with al-Shabab.
Rachel Chandler: Not that we know
of.
Q377 Mr Roy: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q378 Mr Roy: No idea?
Rachel Chandler: No.
Paul Chandler: Speculation has
suggested that it was the Somali diaspora and/or the TFG. Either
of those sounds a likely contributor.
Q379 Chair: TFG?
Paul Chandler: The Transitional
Federal Government.
Q380 Mr Watts: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q381 Mr Watts: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q382 Mr Ainsworth: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q383 Mr Watts: That may be something
shared by other individuals. Do you believe that the British Government
are right not to pay ransoms?
Rachel Chandler: Yes.
Paul Chandler: In principle, but
as with all policy statements, it is something that a government
aspire to, and every situation should be considered as a unique
one. But in principle, I do not think that taxpayers' money should
be used to pay ransoms.
Q384 Mr Watts: You do not think
that the British Government have been involved, in any shape or
form, in providing the ransom.
Paul Chandler: They say they have
not. That is all I can say.
Q385 Mr Watts: Governments say
lots of things. Where the money came from is quite mysterious.
Paul Chandler: Yes. The Somali
government do not have hypothecation any more than ours do.
Q386 Chair: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q387 Mr Ainsworth: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q388 Mr Ainsworth: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q389 Mr Ainsworth: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Q390 Mr Ainsworth: Going back
to your desire that action should be taken for enforcement purposes
rather than hostage rescue. Governments cannot do anything secretly.
These things do go on, I am certain. However, if you have a policy
it becomes public. You appear to be espousing the view that there
ought to be robust enforcement intervention, and those rights
should be delegated fairly low, so they are not held in special
forces or those who are trained for hostage rescue, for the purpose
of deterring piracy, irrespective of the risk to hostages.
Paul Chandler: Not irrespective
of it. No, I am suggesting there is perhaps a parallel to the
enforcement of any set of laws: that you devolve it to an organisation
set up for that purpose, the police force, for example.
Q391 Mr Ainsworth: The current
situation is that there are people who are trained in hostage
rescue and there are relatively few of them. They are the people
authorised for this kind of thing. We have seen that even US navy
SEALs attempted a rescue in Afghanistan and the hostage was killed
during the rescue. If you were to say that British forces—far
wider—any Royal Marine Navy officer should attempt for enforcement
purposes an attack in those circumstances, you would have to expect
that the incidence of death would be considerably higher. The
risk would go up exponentially.
Paul Chandler: I think that is
right. If you reduce the overall number of hostages from a peak
of say 800 or so, which it reached last year, down to what one
could say was an acceptable level of piracy—perhaps 20 or
30, I don't know, perhaps even 10—
Q392 Mr Ainsworth: Then the overall
good offsets it.
Paul Chandler: That is my view.
Q393 Mr Watts: Is that the view
that your family held?
Paul Chandler: Probably not.
Q394 Mr Watts: I put that question
because it is something that politicians have to consider. If
that went wrong, would your families have taken the same view?
Or would they be quoted in the morning papers saying that this
should never have happened? I think they may have had a different
view from you. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Paul Chandler: Mr Ainsworth mentioned
the Linda Norgrove situation. I thought it was very good of her
father to come out and say that the right thing was done, even
though it did not work out.
Rachel Chandler: My preference
is prevention. What I would like to see the Navy doing more of
is aggressively tracking down the pirate groups before they get
to the stage of having hostages, and we then have the dilemma
of what to do about trying to rescue them. I still cannot believe
that with all the resources available, and surveillance resources
in particular, that the group of pirates who took us had been
at sea at least four or five days before they got to us. That
is a very empty sea. We were at sea for five days between the
Seychelles and the Somali coast and we saw nothing until we saw
that warship—actually the French trawler. I cannot understand
how, with all the resources that we have, they got to that position.
Q395 Mr Ainsworth: We cannot police
those waters effectively. That is what you are saying.
Rachel Chandler: We appear not
to have the resources and the co-ordination to be able to track
them down; but that has to be the answer for prevention. To stop
these groups of pirates, ideally we would destroy their bases
and destroy their equipment before they even got off the beaches.
Once they set out to sea and they are beyond the reasonable range
of fishing boats there are not that many fishermen off that coast
of Somalia. I agree that in the Gulf of Aden it is a totally
different matter, because you have fishermen everywhere, but in
that part of the Somali basin I do not understand why it is not
possible to monitor and track down these groups.
Paul Chandler: That is where I
would really like to see the robustness—not so much in attacking
vessels when hostages have been taken, but in dealing with them.
Q396 Mr Ainsworth: Attacking them—killing
them? Before they've—
Paul Chandler: No, no; do not
put those words into my mouth. There has been a report to the
United Nations suggesting that there are 3,000 to 3,500 pirates
active on the sea. People say there is an inexhaustible supply
of replacements. Well, I do not think that is actually true.
There are a lot of disaffected young men, certainly, but perhaps
the risk balance as they see it can be changed a little.
The other thing that is said is that well over
1,000 pirates have been through naval hands in the last two years,
I think, and essentially have been released. This is where I
think it goes wrong, because if you took those well over 1,000
pirates out of the 3,000 to 3,500, you would have had quite a
big impact on the problem, and you would be starting to change
the balance, as it is seen by the youngsters in Somalia.
You have heard legal expert evidence that states
that the law is not a problem. The law of the sea is the closest
thing we have to international law. Yet as far as I can see the
UN must be throwing up its hands and saying, "Why don't you
member states get out there and enforce it?" I know there
are difficulties, and I know it is not that simple, but I think
a more robust approach could and should be taken.
Q397 Chair: Do you think the
law is there? You have the problem: because it looks like a pirate,
is it a pirate?
Paul Chandler: I think you have
to say we are putting responsible people in charge of a multi-million
pound warship, and we can trust them in the first instance to
say, "Well, no, that's not a ladder salesman, I'm sorry."
That's the excuse some of them use. I don't think it is that
difficult to tell. As Rachel says, it is different in the Gulf
of Aden, where you have a lot of small fishing vessels, but nobody
who is 1,300 km from Somalia is going to be a fisherman without
a refrigerated hold in his ship.
Q398 Chair: We have lots of clever lawyers
advising us on this very point. I think we could talk around it
for a long time.
Can I take you back, before I hand you over
to Ann, about the media? You said that you didn't think taxpayers'
money should be used to pay ransoms. I am sure my constituents
would agree. Do you think the Foreign Office should facilitate
payment of ransoms?
Rachel Chandler: I think that
the Foreign Office is probably not best placed to actively process
advancing negotiations, and it comes back to what they can do
in a case like ours—and ours is quite an unusual case, although
sadly we do have further cases. In a case like ours, where it
is private individuals, who do not have automatic access to the
kidnap and ransom expertise, I think that the Foreign Office could
immediately help the family to proceed. Essentially, it should
clearly say to the family, "We cannot help you; you need
help from professional expertise in kidnap and ransom."
Q399 Chair: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q400 Chair: ***
Rachel Chandler: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q401 Chair: ***
Paul Chandler: ***
Q402 Ann Clwyd: There are various
views on the role of the media. Should there be a total black-out
when people are kidnapped, or is it helpful to have media coverage?
You yourselves took part in one or two videos. I do not know how
many.
Rachel Chandler: Not voluntarily,
of course.
Paul Chandler: We were at gunpoint.
Rachel Chandler: The advice from
kidnap and ransom experts in the commercial sector is a media
black-out. I have no doubt that the media coverage of our case
encouraged our kidnappers to believe they could get millions of
dollars for us—far more than we could raise.
Q403 Ann Clwyd: Is that because
the media coverage gave the idea that you were very high value?
Rachel Chandler: Exactly. In their
society, they expect that the family—in their view, our
family is the British people—would all rally round. The
British people are very wealthy in their view and, relatively
speaking, they are. So they saw no problem in our raising millions
of dollars.
Paul Chandler: It is interesting
to note the case of Colin Freeman who was kidnapped. He is open
in his book and he was openly apologetic when he met us. He said,
"I am the biggest hypocrite because, within hours of my being
kidnapped, my editor had been ringing around and there was a complete
news black-out." So the industry looks after its own, and
it knows the value of that.
Having said that, I believe that freedom of
speech in its widest sense is the fundamental freedom that we
enjoy. I do not like to see it curtailed in any way, and there
are prices that we have to pay for that freedom.
As a final point, by reporting the words of
pirate representatives the media were directly aiding and abetting
criminals in a criminal act. The legal minds around this table
could probably have a field day discussing that, but there is
a line and perhaps they crossed it in that case. I do not know
but, as Rachel said, it certainly helps their cause to have a
lot of media interest overseas.
Q404 Ann Clwyd: Do you feel that
you might have been released earlier if there had been no media
coverage?
Rachel Chandler: Definitely our
family feel that the negotiations were delayed because of media
interest, both in that it encouraged our captors to believe that
they could make a lot more money out of us than our family felt
was possible and also because, each time there was media interest,
it encouraged them to hang on.
Q405 Chair: Paul and Rachel, thank you
very much indeed. Those were the questions that we wanted to ask
you. Is there anything that you would like to say before we finish?
I really appreciate you coming along here. We do many inquiries.
Some are very robust, but this is quite a delicate one, and we
are keen to get it right. We wanted to hear all sides of the story.
Anyway, we really appreciate it, so thank you very much indeed.
Paul Chandler: Thank you for inviting
us.
1 Not printed. Back
2
See Ev 79. Back
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