By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Al-Shabaab militant group in Somalia on Saturday freed 14 Iranian fishermen abducted eight years ago, allowing them to return home, news agency reported on Sunday.
The fishermen were abducted in international waters near Somalia in 2014. Their release came after “lengthy negotiations with government officials, tribal chiefs and Somali elders,” agency report says.
They were welcomed in a special ceremony at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport on Saturday night before being transported to their southern hometown of Chabahar.
Their release comes almost a month after Somali police said they discovered 20 foreigners 14 Iranians and six Pakistanis near territory controlled by the militant group.
Somali police at that moment said some had been kidnapped by Al-Shabaab in 2014, while others had been abducted on the southern coast of Harardhere in mid-2019.
It was unclear how they came to be released, and police provided no further details, citing an ongoing inquiry.
Reports suggested they could have been abducted by pirates and handed over to Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda that includes foreign fighters among its ranks.
Al-Shabaab, which controls swaths of rural Somalia, has been trying to overthrow the central government for 15 years, funding its insurgency through criminal activities including kidnapping and ransom.
Somalia has also been plagued by piracy for years, though attacks on maritime vessels off the coast have fallen off sharply in recent years since peaking at 176 in 2011.
