Kings Nehemiah Okoye, a Nigerian marine engineer, has been a seafarer for 25 years. In 2010, while working for the Shell oil company, he was kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Nigeria. Less than two years later he was kidnapped again, this time by Somali pirates. This is his story.

I was first attacked on 1 October 2010. Nigerian pirates killed all 16 of the military personnel who were escorting our vessel, then they boarded our boat, stole all our property and vandalised everything else.

They sailed the ship back to Nigeria and took us into the forest where they held us for four days. They beat us and made us lie down so they could stand on us and march over our bodies. They said they hadn't come to kill us, but to take our oil. After they had siphoned off all the diesel from our ship, they left. I was free.

Less than two years later I was attacked again, this time by Somali pirates.

I was on board a chemical tanker about 150 nautical miles off the coast of Pakistan. It was 28 February 2012.
<p id="story_continues_2">It all happened so suddenly - I was down in the engine room when about 12 of them climbed on board with a ladder. They were shooting everywhere and forced us at gunpoint to sail the ship to Somalia. It took six days.</p>
As soon as we got to Somalia, the pirates asked us to contact the owner of the ship to start ransom negotiations.

We were held hostage on the boat for more than a year. The pirates had a special negotiator called Mursal who would come in from Kenya every month or so. I helped negotiate on behalf of the company because the ship owner was Nigerian.

At the beginning, they asked for $25m but the ship owner said he didn't have that kind of money. In the end, I think they settled for about $1.5m

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<strong>Image credit</strong>: bbc.com