Der Deutsch-Amerikanische Journalist Michael Scott Moore (Twitter-Account) wollte über Piraten in Somalia berichten – und geriet selbst in ihre Gefangenschaft.  977 Tage lang  war er ihr Gefangener. Im letzten September kam er frei. Nun hat Moore im Guardian ein grandioses Stück Journalismus abgeliefert – über seine Gefangenschaft, die somalischen Piraten und die absurde Summe von $20 Millionen, die sie für ihn bekommen wollten. Ganz, ganz große Leseempfehlung. Erscheint auf deutsch übrigens auch in der aktuellen Ausgabe des SPIEGEL.

„The truck approached with its cannon aimed at our windshield. A dozen or so men jumped off and swarmed to my car door. They fired into the air and tried to open the door. I held it shut, but they cracked my wrist with their Kalashnikovs, pulled me out, and beat me on the head. Gerlach was also beaten – but not kidnapped – and our gunman in the passenger seat never fired a shot. My glasses were broken in the dust. My brain recoiled from what was happening. Before they fired their weapons I had convinced myself they just wanted to see my papers. While they dragged me to a waiting car I felt a reflexive horror for my family and the burden I was about to become. I wanted to rewind everything.

We drove, first, to a house on the edge of Galkacyo, where my bag was handed to an angry-looking man who waved us away. We sped out of town to the east, and I sat with ripped clothes and a bleeding scalp, squeezed into the back seat next to three surly gunmen, bouncing across the bush, for several hours.

“OK, OK,” the pirates in the front seat said to me. “No problem.”

The car bounced over a bump so hard that my head hit the roof and left a bloodstain on the fabric.

“Fuck!” I said and pointed at the blood, cradling the broken wrist in my lap.

At first I spoke mainly in obscenities.

“OK, OK,” they said.“