Britain refuses to pay couple’s kidnap ransom

BRITISH Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday insisted his government would not get involved in any ransom payments to secure the release of a British couple kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean.

Miliband said he could not stop private individuals from pursuing the possibility of a ransom deal, but the British government had always made it clear making concessions to hostage-takers was not in the country’s interests.

His comments came days after Paul and Rachel Chandler issued a desperate plea for help, revealing they had been split up by their captors and feared they could be killed within days.

The couple, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, were taken hostage after heading from the Seychelles towards Tanzania in their yacht Lynn Rival on October 23 last year.

Unconfirmed BBC reports suggest an attempt by British special forces to free them was “bungled” because of bureaucratic delays and technical problems.

And the pirates have said if the British government is unwilling to pay for their return, then their friends should raise the money.

In an interview with ITV News, retired quantity surveyor Mr Chandler, 59, said he was “just existing in hope”, adding: “I’m afraid that they will just kill us and abandon us in the desert here.”

He said the pirates had separated him from his economist wife, 55, who told him in their last phone call that she was “giving up”, and he likened their conditions in solitary confinement to the treatment of a “captive animal”.

“They’ve lost patience,” he said. “They set a deadline of three or four days. If they don’t hear then they say they will let us die.”

His wife said: “It is a very desperate situation here.”