After almost four months of anxious wait, seven families in India heaved a sigh of relief. Their family members — seven Indian sailors, who had been captured off the coast of Yemen after their cargo ship was hijacked earlier this year — are set to return home, as the Indian government has secured their release from the captivity of Houthi rebels in war-torn Yemen. The seven sailors were among the eleven people captured in January 2022 from a Dubai-owned cargo ship named Rawabi, which was hijacked off the coast of southern Yemen on charges that it was carrying weapons.
An intervention from Yemen’s neighbouring country Oman helped secure the release of the Indian sailors, sources in the know tell TNM. The seven Indians have been taken to Oman on an Oman Air Force plane and now arrangements will be made for their repatriation to India. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said that the people who have been freed from the custody of Houthi rebels are now in the care of Oman. Among those released from Yemen include a British national Luke Symons and his family, who had been in Houthi rebel custody since 2017 without any charge or trial.
"Delighted to confirm that Captain Carlos Demata, Mohammed Jashim Khan, Ayenachew Mekonen, Dipash Moota Parambil, Akhil Reghu, Surya Hidayat Pratama, Sreejith Sajeevan, Mohammed Munwar Sameer, Sandeep Singh, Luke Symons and his wife and child, Maung Than, and Veera VSSG Vasamsetti have been released from custody in Yemen earlier today," the Oman Minister said on Twitter.
Responding to Albusaidi's tweet, Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar thanked him for Oman's assistance in the matter. "Thank you my friend @badralbusaidi for your help and assistance. Look forward to their safe homecoming," Jaishankar tweeted.
Speaking to TNM, Haryana-based Dimple (name changed), whose husband was a second officer on the ship, said that she spoke to her husband two days ago after they were taken to Oman. “They have reached Oman and they are safe, he told me. We had a quick call since there was not much time, but he said that they did not have to face any torture or ill-treatment when they were in the custody of the Houthi rebels.”
Lakshmi, whose 26-year-old son Veera Venkata Siva Sai Gireesh worked as an oiler on the cargo ship and has been now released, told TNM that she has not been able to get in touch with her son yet, but has been informed by officials that the sailors will be reaching India in a day or two.
The ship that they were captured from, is owned by a UAE-based company called Khalid Faraj Shipping Limited, which is headquartered in Dubai. The sailors and crew of this ship were recruited on a contractual basis, as is normally the case, through independent contractors and agents. Therefore, when they were captured, diplomatic intervention became necessary.
However, the release and repatriation of the Indians from the war-torn country had been a challenge, as Yemen does not have a functioning government to hold diplomatic talks. The part of Yemen where the Indians were captured was under the control of Yemen's Houthi rebels and so the Indian government had to rope in organisations like the United Nations or countries that are friendly to them. In this case, the country of Oman helped in the release of Indians.
The seven sailors were captured on the midnight of January 2, 2022, when their cargo ship named Rawabi, bearing the United Arab Emirates flag, was going from the island of Socotra off the coast of southern Yemen, to Jazan in Saudi Arabia. While Saudi Arabia authorities had said that the ship was carrying medical supplies and equipment, the Houthis seized the ship on the allegation that it was a "military cargo ship carrying military equipment."
This is not the first time the Houthi rebels in Yemen have hijacked a ship. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition of nine countries, has been fighting in support of Yemen's internationally recognized government against Iran-backed Houthis for nearly seven years. The Saudi-led coalition has accused the Houthis of attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, which connects to the Suez Canal and is one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes. However, in a breakthrough earlier this month, the Houthis and the coalition agreed to a two-month ceasefire agreement, the first in a seven-year-long civil war. On April 23, a delegation from Oman arrived in Yemen's capital Sanaa to convince the Houthi militia to engage in the peace process with the government. On April 24, the Indian sailors were released from captivity.