Somali pirates chop off hostage captain’s arm to elicit $3m ransom

Somali pirates have started to cut off their hostages’ limbs in a bid to extract even greater ransoms from the owners of the ships they capture.

The horrific new tactic was used last Friday on the Vietnamese captain of a ship being held in the Somali pirate lair of Haradhere.

Chao-I Wu’s right arm was cut off after negotiations to pay a $3million ransom for his fishing ship, the FV Shiuh Fu-1, broke down.

Afterwards, the pirates allowed Mr Wu’s fellow crew members to call their families and describe what had happened.

‘This group of pirates were allowed the crew to call their relatives for only a few minutes – just long enough to tell their families about the amputation.

‘They begged their relatives to pay and some of them were crying.

‘It was a message to the owner and their families that if the owners don’t pay this amount of ransom they will hurt another crew member’, a pirate source told the Somalia Report news service.

Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre News reported that crew member Tran Van Hung called his father to say that he had seen the pirates chop off the captain’s arm.

The pirates had also repeatedly beat him and the deputy captain, Mr Hung added.

The horrifying new tactic comes soon after a disabled French woman – whom pirates snatched from the Kenyan tourist spot – died while being held by her captors.

Marie Dedieu, 66, was in a wheelchair when armed men dragged her across the sands of Manda Island and into their waiting speed boats.

British tourist Judith Tebbutt, 56, is still being held in Somalia after being captured in a similar attack on September 11th last year.

Mrs Tebbutt’s husband David was shot dead as he tried to stop the gang abducting them from huts in the remote Kenyan tourist destination of Kiwayu Safari Village.

The Taiwanese-owned FV Shiuh Fu-1 has been held in Somalia for over two years, having been captured in seas just north of Madagascar on December 25, 2010. It has 26 crew on board.

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