Chief engineer of the MV Blida has vowed never to go to sea again Mohamed Ait Ramdane's ordeal did not end when a ransom fell from the sky and the pirates left the ship. After 31 years as a sailor, the chief engineer of the MV Blida has vowed never to go to sea again.Released on November 3 with his 25 fellow crew members, the 55-year-old Algerian is a bruised man, grappling with the same trauma experienced by hundreds of other often anonymous victims of Somali piracy.Held hostage for 10 months, the crew of 17 Algerians, six Ukrainians, two Filipinos, one Jordanian and one Indonesian endured death threats and were deprived of food and clean drinking water while they watched their Somali captors get drunk."At the beginning, we were afraid we would be killed. After that, they killed us every day psychologically," said Ramdane, who talked falteringly about his ordeal from his family home in Hadjout, 70 kilometres (45 miles) west of Algiers."The Somali pirates were on board a Tunisian ship, Hannibal, equipped with three motor boats," he explained.Between 20 and 30 heavily armed pirates then ascended the Blida, cutting the radio and radar as they arrived.Like Ramdane, fellow sailor ...
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