A British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean more than three months ago appealed in videos aired today to their government to save them.
Paul Chandler (60) and his wife Rachel (56) who are being held in separate locations under 24-hour guard by their captors in Somalia, made the desperate pleas in separate taped messages.
"I don't know what to do. Will somebody please help? I just want to say, please, to my government, get me and my wife out of here," Paul Chandler said in video footage obtained by Sky News.
"We are innocent and we have done no wrong. We have no money and we can't pay a ransom," he added in the video which was barely audible in parts.
His wife, Rachel, looking frail and gaunt, issued a similar impassioned plea.
"Please help us, these people are not treating us well," she said.
"If I was with my husband I would feel a lot better. It's because I'm not with my husband that I'm feeling so lonely and desperate. We need to be together because we have not much time left."
The couple from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in southeast England were kidnapped as they sailed their yacht, the Lynn Rival, in the Indian Ocean on October 23rd.
Sky did not say how it obtained the images, or who had made them. British media reports said the film of Rachel had been made by a news agency journalist who met her in captivity.
The Foreign Office said it was monitoring the developments closely and reiterated that it does not pay ransoms.
"We call for the safe and swift release of Paul and Rachel," it said in a statement.
Reuters