A lot of news has been generated lately by the pirates operating off Somalia.  But what about their captives?

“They are fine,” a pirate calling himself Daybad said by phone from the ship in the Gulf of Aden. “They are allowed to contact their families. The crew are not prisoners, they can move from place to place, wherever they want to, they can even sleep on their usual beds and they have their own keys. The only thing they are missing is their freedom to leave the ship.”

Two Britons – Peter French, from County Durham, and James Grady, from Renfrewshire – are among the crew, and there were local reports yesterday that the ransom had been reduced to $15m (£9.9m) as the hostage situation entered its 10th day. The ship’s cargo of crude oil is worth $100m.

“I would say there is not a reason for complaint,” said Marek Nishky, the ship’s captain, speaking under the scrutiny of the pirates. “We were given already the opportunity to talk to our families and today I was negotiating with a gentleman here [about] another such possibility. I am promised it will be soon, today or tomorrow, my crew will again be allowed to talk to their families. As you can realise, these are the most important things for us now.”

So they are treating their captives pretty huh?  Well not always.

Five Indian sailors who were among the crew of a Japanese-owned cargo ship hijacked by pirates and held for two months before a ransom was paid said Monday their captivity was “total desperation.”

“I wish that no one else ever has to go through this — (hijackers) are not human but rather animals,” said Alister Fernandes, one of the sailors, at a news conference in Mumbai, India.

Oh well you decide.