Last week Filipino sailor Antonio Libref was in forest in the Horn of Africa marking his 1,672nd day in captivity at the hands of Somali pirates. Kept alongside 25 other Asians, all crew of the Omani-flagged Naham 3 fishing vessel, thin and haggard hostages were treated “like animals” forced “to eat rats just to survive”. 
 
 
 
 On Monday, the 32-year-old was having his first proper meal as a newly free man in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Two days earlier, he and fellow sailors from Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia and China, captured in March 2012 south of the Seychelles, had been released in exchange for a ransom. 
 
 
 
 Bile Hussein, the pirates’ representative, claimed in comments reported by one news agency that the value of that ransom was $1.5m (£1.2m), a figure that could not be independently confirmed. 
 
 The men’s handover represented “the end of captivity for the last remaining seafarers taken hostage during the height of Somali piracy”, said the NGO Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP). The Taiwan-owned Naham 3 crew were the second-longest held hostages by Somali pirates. Only one other group, who were released in 2015 after five years, were held longer. 
 
 
 
 “We were treated like animals, so it feels good to be human again,” Libref told the Guardian via phone as he waited to be repatriated to the Philippines, where he hopes to join his family later this week. He said he was thrilled to be free. 
 
 
 
 “I’m full of happiness,” he said. “It was a surprise; we didn’t expect to be released ... If you believe in God, hope is always there – we were in the hands of pirates yet there was hope, there was a miracle and we’re back in normality.” 
 
 The happiness of those who were freed, however, may be tinged with the grief felt for those who did not make it. The Naham 3 crew had originally numbered 29, but the captain was killed on the day the ship was hijacked and two others “succumbed to illness during their captivity”, according to OBP. 
 
 Details of how the sailors were released – and who paid a ransom – have been kept under wraps. What is known is that the men’s torment came to an end when they were flown to Nairobi on Sunday evening. Images taken at the Jomo Kenyatta international airport show the former hostages, tears in their eyes, hugging each other in disbelief. 
 
 John Steed, a retired British colonel who helped to negotiate the release as coordinator of the Hostage Support Partners (HSP), was on the plane to bring the men to Kenya. 
 
 
 
 “We flew into Somalia yesterday to the city of Galkayo, which is one of these divided cities with a lot of fighting,” he said. “We picked them up in an airstrip outside the city, and they were handed to us by a local community, elders and regional administration, and flew them back here to Nairobi, where they are having medical care.” 
 
 
 
 Steed said the hostages were beginning to open up, talking about “how cruel the pirates were and how they beat them up and tortured them”. Some of their account is harrowing. The hostages have said that two of the sailors who subsequently died were then kept inside the freezer. 
 
 
 
 After being captured, Libref and his fellow hostages were kept on board Naham 3 for a year and a half before being taken to land. The OBP said trawler was initially tethered to another hijacked vessel, the MV Albedo, but that both had subsequently sunk, on separate occasions. 
 
 
 
 “When the MV Albedo began to sink, with its crew onboard, the crew of the Naham 3 courageously assisted in their rescue by jumping into the ocean to save the drowning seafarers. Over a year after its capture, the Naham 3 sank and the crew was brought ashore, where they were subject to much greater risks,” according to OBP. 
 
 
 
 Out in the forest, Libref said the hostages became so hungry they ate rats. “We suffered a lot, we only ate rice, beans, flour, wheat, so we were forced to catch rats; we had to survive,” he said. They made nets out of rope and tree trunks to capture rats and birds, using rice as bait. 
 
 
 
 Arnel Balbero, another of the captives, told the BBC his time as a hostage had left him feeling like the “walking dead”. 
 
 Many people went to greet the hostages as they arrived in Nairobi, but the presence of one person took all 26 of them by surprise. Michael Scott Moore is a 
 
 US journalist who had spent five months with them on Naham 3. Moore, who was captured while researching a book on piracy in Somalia, was released in 2014. 
 
 
 
 He said he had got along well with all the former hostages, especially the five Filipinos, who spoke English. He said their tales of captivity were an indication of how badly they were treated. 
 
 
 
 “I was totally hungry. I lost a lot of weight but I wasn’t so desperate that I felt that I needed to catch birds,” he said. “Two of them died of disease; what they always do is throw drugs at the person who is sick. When I came down with something actually serious, they tested my blood, and they found it was malaria and they brought me the proper medication. The fact that they didn’t do that with these guys tells you that on an individual level, the circumstances were worse for each one of them.” 
 
 
 
 Piracy off Somalia’s coast was once a serious threat to the global shipping industry, but the number of attacks has declined sharply in recent years since vessels began carrying armed guards and EU naval forces increased patrols. No commercial ship has been successfully attacked for about four years, but observers warn the threat remains. 
 
 The OBP said on Saturday: “Whilst there has not been a successful attack on a commercial vessel since 2012, there have been a number of attacks on fishing vessels and there remain a number of hostages still held in Somalia.” Among those still far from freedom are 10 Iranians and three Kenyans. In 2015, at least 306 seafarers were attacked in the region. 
 
 Libref said he did not have any plans for the future yet. “Now, to be free is enough,” he said. “But my message is to the pirates: what they are doing is very bad. You capture people; you ask for money. What is the value of money?” 
 
 ||||| The fishermen’s release was negotiated by a former British army colonel who has made a mission of working to free ‘forgotten hostages’ 
 
 Somali pirates have released 26 Asian hostages held for nearly five years after the hijacking of their fishing vessel, the last commercial ship seized at the height of the country’s piracy scourge, negotiators said on Saturday. 
 
 
 
 The crew of the Naham 3, held hostage for the second longest by Somali pirates, were taken captive when their Omani-flagged vessel was seized in March 2012 south of the Seychelles. 
 
 “We are very pleased to announce the release of the Naham 3 crew early this morning,” said John Steed, coordinator of the Hostage Support Partners (HSP) who helped negotiate their release. 
 
 Steed, a retired British army colonel who has made it his mission to save “forgotten hostages” told AFP the mission to return the crew to their families still had one obstacle: extracting them from the city of Galkayo, where fighting was raging between forces from the rival regional states of Puntland and Galmudug. 
 
 “There is fighting in Galkayo so it is very dangerous at the moment, they are exchanging artillery tonight. We will go in early tomorrow morning if the fighting stops and bring them back to Nairobi for medicals and a clean-up.” 
 
 Clashes in Galkayo have left at least 11 dead and more than 50,000 displaced this month, the UN humanitarian agency said last week. 
 
 Once extracted, the crew, from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, will be returned to their home countries and families. 
 
 “They have spent over four and a half years in deplorable conditions away from their families,” said Steed. 
 
 He said the crew was malnourished and one of the hostages had a bullet wound in his foot, another had had a stroke and another was suffering from diabetes. 
 
 Pirates initially took 29 crew hostage, but one person died during the hijacking, and two more “succumbed to illness” during their captivity, said a statement from Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP). 
 
 Steed said negotiations – which took 18 months – involved mediation with community, tribal and religious leaders. He declined to comment on the exact details but said the road to the hostages being freed was filled with peril and “heroism”. 
 
 The Naham 3 was originally tethered to another hijacked vessel, the MV Albedo, which was seized in November 2010 and released by the HSP in 2014. When the MV Albedo began to sink “these guys jumped into the waters and rescued the drowning crew”, Steed said. 
 
 He said when the Naham 3 sank, a year after its capture, “these guys were then taken ashore where they have been ever since with pirates making increasingly irrational demands. 
 
 “The release of the Naham 3 crew represents the end of captivity for the last remaining seafarers taken hostage during the height of Somali piracy,” he said. 
 
 Only a crew of Thai fishermen, released in February last year after nearly five years in captivity, spent longer held by Somali pirates. Many of the hostages left languishing in the hands of pirates are impoverished fishermen. 
 
 “If you don’t have insurance or you are a poor little ship no one is going to help get you out,” said Steed. 
 
 Pirates chased away from British freighter by Nigerian warship Read more 
 
 The first major commercial vessel was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2005 and the activity flourished in a country wracked by years of civil war and with few jobs and no central government. 
 
 Piracy became a major threat to international shipping and prompted interventions by the UN, EU and Nato, while commercial vessels hired private armed guards aboard their vessels. 
 
 In 2012 Somali piracy cost the global economy between $5.7bn and $6.1bn (€5.6bn) and at the peak in January 2011, Somali pirates held 736 hostages and 32 boats. 
 
 According to the OBP, while overall numbers are down in the western Indian Ocean, pirates in the region in 2015 attacked at least 306 seafarers. 
 
 While there has not been a successful attack on a commercial vessel since 2012, there have been several on fishing boats and there are still 10 Iranian hostages taken in 2015 and three Kenyan kidnap victims – one a very ill, paralysed woman – in the hands of the pirates, said Steed.
– Some 26 "forgotten hostages" held by Somali pirates for years after the piracy crisis faded from the headlines are finally free. The captives, fishermen from Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, and the Philippines, were freed Saturday with the help of the Hostage Support Partners group, which negotiated with tribal and religious leaders. John Steed, a retired British colonel who works as a coordinator for the group, tells the AFP that the men are in "reasonable condition," considering that they have "spent over four and a half years in deplorable conditions away from their families." He says the men are the "last remaining seafarers taken hostage during the height of Somali piracy." Steed says one crew member died during the March 2012 hijacking of their Omani-flagged vessel and another two died during their captivity. He says the boat sank a year after its capture and the men were taken to a village in Somalia, where they were held by "pirates making increasingly irrational demands." On Sunday, the freed sailors were flown from Somalia to Kenya, where one of them told the BBC he felt like the "walking dead" after so long as a captive. He said food and water were in short supply and the men had eaten rats to survive. "Eat anything, even you not like, you feel hungry, you eat it,” he said. "You eat rat, you cook it."