#michael scott moore

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[nprfreshair]

Journalist Held Captive By Pirates Says Focus And Forgiveness Were Crucial

Kidnapped by Somali pirates, journalist Michael Scott Moore spent two and half years in captivity. At times he was held on land, other times at sea. Once, when he was on a 160-foot tuna boat, he tried to escape by jumping over the side at night.

"It was, like, a 20 foot leap off the deck of the ship, and I was just exultant at first," Moore says.

Moore had hoped the pirates would leave him behind in the water. "The engine wasn't in terrific shape, so I didn't think there was a way to turn around the ship," he says.

Instead, the captain cut the engine and let the boat drift towards him. As the big industrial ship closed in on him in the dark water, Moore made a snap decision: He opted to get back on board.

"They found me eventually with the search lights and I raised my hand and they threw me a life preserver," he says. "By that point everything was pretty desperate and pretty hopeless."

The pirates had initially demanded a $20 million ransom, but as the years passed, Moore's mother negotiated the figure down to $1.6 million. Eventually she raised enough money to free her son.

Moore writes about his ordeal in the memoir, The Desert and the Sea.

[nprbooks]

Michael Scott Moore is a journalist who traveled to Somalia to write a book about the history of piracy in the Horn of Africa. It did not go as planned.

The title of his new book tells you what happened. It's called The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast. Check out his conversation with NPR’s Ari Shapiro here.

-- Petra

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The Daily Show Season 23 - Episode 130: Michael Scott Moore AirDate: July 24th, 2018, 11:00 PM

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Naima, 30, from Somalia, took one year to reach Italy. She lives in a migrant reception center near the hill town of Mineo in Sicily. The so-called Mineo camp is a former U.S. military base, with room for about 3,000 asylum-seekers in its American-style suburban housing units. Naima traveled overland through Ethiopia, Sudan, and Libya to reach the Mediterranean, and she had to remain six months in Libya before she boarded a rubber dinghy. Women are often detained for sex work by traffickers on the road to Europe. “They are not good people,” said Naima. She’s pictured here with Ismail, a Somali liaison and translator for the Mineo camp.

The town of Mineo is visible on a hill behind the suburban-style houses of the former U.S. military base.

Image and caption by Michael Scott Moore.

For more of Michael’s reporting, visit his project “Somalia: Pirates and Anarchy.”

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Inflatable fast boats from the German supply ship Frankfurt am Main rescued a total of 115 West African migrants from a rubber dinghy near Tripoli on May 15.

The Frankfurt’s Cultural Liaison was a German army captain with experience in Mali who went by Captain Fred. The entire Frankfurt crew operated without last-name tags on their uniforms while journalists were on board in May. Their rescue work in the Mediterranean is controversial, and they’re careful of online threats by anti-immigration Germans. Captain Fred said EU naval forces in the Mediterranean were still expecting a surge of migrants from Libya compared with 2015. So far — in spite of excellent weather in the central Mediterranean — “we have not seen extra Syrian migrants coming from the eastern Mediterranean,” where an EU agreement with Turkey has recently closed a shorter route to Europe.

Image and caption by Michael Scott Moore.

For more of Michael’s reporting, visit his project “Somalia: Pirates and Anarchy.”

[pulitzerfieldnotes]

Ahmed, 18, took nine months to travel from Liberia to the Mediterranean, where he was rescued from a rubber boat by the German supply ship Frankfurt am Main on May 15, 2016. He came through Guinea, Mali, Algeria, and Libya. “I make money, I proceed,” he said, meaning he stopped to work for one month in Mali, two months in Algeria, then waited a month for the inflatable dinghy in Libya. He says he was not always paid for his work. “Some a them are robbers,” he said. “Sometimes they pay you for working, sometimes you never see the money.” Slave labor to pay for passage is normal along the African migrant trail. Ahmed was pleased to be on the Frankfurt, though his chances of staying legally in Europe are slim. “It make me so happy that I forgot all the struggle it took to get me here,” said Ahmed, who is Muslim. “I thank God.”

Image and caption by Michael Scott Moore.

For more of Michael’s reporting, visit his project “Somalia: Pirates and Anarchy.”

[warganenews]

Somalia: My 977 days held hostage by Somali pirates

#Somalia: My #977 days held hostage by #Somalipirates

Michael Scott Moore was kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2012. For the first time, he tells the story of his abduction, detention and eventual release.

One afternoon two years into my captivity, in a dirty villa, I sat up on the mattress and noticed that my guard had left the room. His rifle lay on a mat. I considered grabbing it.

The pirates were holding me in Galkacyo, a regional capital in…

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