‘I AM the captain of the MT Honour 25, requesting immediate assistance for our vessel. Our condition is extremely critical. Several members of my crew have fallen seriously ill... They are no longer able to hold on,’ said Indonesian Captain Ashari Samadikun through a recorded video message dated June 16, 2026.
‘We are surviving solely on plain white rice and contaminated water. The company has not sent any form of assistance to us.The hijackers refuse to negotiate with any third parties; they only want to negotiate directly with the company listed on our ship’s documents.
The Honour25-aPalau-flagged oil tanker carrying 17 to 19 crew members, including 10 Pakistanis was hijacked by armed pirates off the coast of Puntland, Somalia on April 21, 2026.
Three months have gone by without progress, either in negotiations or the payment of the ransom said to be around $3 million for the recovery of the hostages.
Since its hijack, the crew has made several emotional videos and audio appeals.
‘We are pleading with the government to intervene and compel our company to take responsibility for its crew. We are facing immense difficulties just to stay alive, and to this day, we have seen no progress,’ the captain’s message said.’We don’t even have clean water to drink; we only have yellowish water to drink from our ship’s tank.
We are given plain boiled rice to eat once every 24 hours,’ saidPakistani crew member, oiler Yasir Khan, through a recorded video message dated June 1, 2026.
In his message, Khan appeals to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif,Chief of Defence Forces and President Asif Zardari, and ‘any other relevant authorities’ to ‘please help us or we won’t be able to survive here’.
‘We only have our government to look up to. Therefore, we ask you to please do something for us so we can go back home and reunite with our families,’ he said in the message.
These video messages are some of the last communications from the hostages.
Question of ownership The agency responsible for hiring them as known to the Pakistani crew is Purser Shipping Consultancy (SMC Pvt Limited / Helmsman Shipping Company, North Nazimabad, Karachi).
There, they know an ‘Osman’, but it was revealed later that he may only be a middleman who hired them.
In another video message this time in English Captain Samadikun has a book in his hands, showing the name of the ship’s official owners: Wharf Chartering Co. of Dubai, who are not interested in talking to the pirates.
‘This book mentions the ship owner company. There is no mention of anyone named Osman. He must be a middleman only,’ he pointed out.
Earlier, several videos and phone calls were made to the families of the hostages, under the supervision of the Somali pirates, to pressure them into paying the ransom. But after mid-June, the messages stopped.
‘They used to give us around five or so minutes to speak, but that has all stopped now. The pirates have blocked our WhatsApp,’ Ayesha Kashif, wife of Second Officer Syed Kashif Umer Naqvi, told Dawn.
Ali Akbar, the older brother of one of the ship’s oilers, Imran Ali, said that both his mother and his sisterin-law Imran’s wife have fallen ill with worry.
Obaidullah, the older brother of another oiler named Rafiullah Khan, also said that the pirates are no longer interested in talking to them.
Aisha Ameen, who is now the only person the pirates contact, said that she had also not received any communication for many days.
‘I keep my cell phone close to me all the time. When they call, they only say to us what they want conveyed, they ignore our queries,’ she said.
‘From what we understood initially... the owner of the ship was Osman. But a WhatsApp message from the pirates to humanitarian Ansar Burney, who also tried to help in resolving the matter, says that ‘Osman’ is a third party in Somalia,’ she shared.
Mr Burney a former human rights minister is the chairman of the Ansar Burney Trust, a non-profit human rights organisation working in all areas of human and civil rights worldwide. He has previouslyparticipated in efforts to free Pakistanis captured by Somali pirates.
‘And here we don’t even have any answers from our own government... For instance, the government will not speak to the pirates directly. The ship owner should do that. But it is not established who owns the ship. It is also said that the oil in the ship has a different owner in Yemen,’ Ms Ameen told Dawn.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said that the government’s efforts to bring the men home continue, adding, ‘We understand the families’ pain.
But Shaheen Burney, vice chairperson of the Ansar Burney Trust, told Dawn that there had been silence from the government for a long time. After the trust kept pushing for action, the matter was referred to theMinistry of Human Rights on the prime minister’s directive.
‘We went to Islamabad for a detailed meeting regarding the matter with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
They told us that the Pakistan embassy in Djibouti is also involved,’ said Mr Burney.
After that, the ministry also held a meeting with the families in Karachi.
However, according to Ayesha Ameen, the ‘same kind of things’ were repeated in the meeting, with the ministry reiterating their limitations and that they could ‘only take the diplomatic way’ forward.
A detailed version of this article can be accessed on Dawn.com