Karachi police briefly detain protesting family members of Pakistani sailors held hostage by Somali pirates

Karachi police briefly detained family members of Pakistani sailors held hostage by Somali pirates during a protest sit-in in the early hours of Monday. The MT Honour 25, a Palau-flagged oil tanker, was hijacked off the coast of Puntland, Somalia, on April 21, with the crew including 10 sailors from Pakistan and others from Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka.

The hostages have been held captive for over four months without significant progress in negotiations or ransom payments, estimated to be around $3 million. The families of the hostages have staged protests multiple times, with Sunday's sit-in at Sharea Faisal near the FTC building and plans for a Monday morning march to the Supreme Court registry.

Police intervened before the planned march and detained some protesters, later releasing them. Ayesha Ameen, whose husband was a fitter on the hijacked ship, expressed frustration, stating that the families had been demanding the recovery of the hostages for four and a half months, but no progress was made. Another protester, a maternal uncle of a second engineer on the ship, condemned the detention, calling it shameful.

The crew members have made distress videos, reporting a lack of clean water, food, and medicine, and requesting the Pakistani government to engage with Somali pirates for their release. The delegation of the Pakistani government, including the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, has also pressed for urgent and effective institutional intervention to secure the sailors' return.