Sailing Couple Seized by Somali Pirates in '08 Are Abducted Off Philippines

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BERLIN — A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for, the old maritime saying goes. A German sailing couple, seized and held for ransom eight years ago by Somali pirates, apparently lived by that rule. A German yachting website reported Monday that the couple appeared to have been abducted again, this time while cruising a dangerous area of the Philippines, by militants of Abu Sayyaf, an insurgent group known for kidnapping and ransoming foreigners. The woman was said to have been killed.

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he couple, Jürgen Kantner, 70, and his partner, Sabine Merz, have been sailing the oceans for many years aboard their 30-footer, the Rockall. They were held for 52 days in Somalia in 2008 before their captors freed them, reportedly after a six-figure ransom had been paid. The Philippine media on Monday reported that a German couple had been attacked while sailing in an area of the southern Philippines under the control of Abu Sayyaf. The woman was shot and the man abducted, the reports said.

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In May 2009, Agence France-Presse reported that Mr. Kantner had returned to Somalia after the couple’s abduction and release, and quoted him as vowing to get the Rockall seaworthy once more and to set off for Asia. “Why should I return to Germany, where I have nobody?” he was quoted as saying. “After 32 years on my boat, I have lost all contact with them.” He acknowledged “that it is a little bit like suicide,” and said he prayed that he would not get captured a second time. In a lengthy interview with the German magazine Yacht after the 2008 abduction, Mr. Kantner and Ms. Merz said they had been captured then while sailing close to the coast of Yemen, and that they had no warning of special danger. They dismissed suggestions that they had courted danger, citing cases of vessels robbed in calmer regions, like the Canary Islands or Corsica.

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