MANILA: One of the Filipino sailors, who was among the 26 freed hostages of the Somali pirates, revealed that sometimes they were forced to eat rats for survival.
Arnel Balbero was sharing the harrowing ordeal they endured for more than four years in the hands of their captors during The Newsroom program of the BBC World Service.
“You don’t say, ‘I don’t like that.’ No. You just eat. We eat rat. We cook it,” Balbero was quoted as saying.
He reportedly likened himself and his fellow sailors to “the walking dead” as they had a hard time adjusting to their surroundings after four years in captivity.
“I don’t know what is… outside of this world when this [is finished], so it’s very hard to start again,” Manila Bulletin quoted Balbero as saying.
The 26 sailors were aboard the fishing boat FV Naham 3, which was sailing south of the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean in 2012 when the Somali pirates took over, the report pointed out.
A year later, the hostages—from China, the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan—were brought to Somalia after their ship sank, said the news portal.
Pirate representative Bile Hussein reportedly claimed the sailors were freed after a $1.5-million ransom was paid.
