CAIRO - Twenty-one Egyptian fishermen, who were sentenced to three months in jail in Libya, will be released next month after completing two-thirds of their jail term, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry official said Thursday. "The 21 fishermen on board two boats were held in October for illegally entering Libyan territorial waters. They were sentenced to three months in prison," said Mohamed Abdel-Hakam, assistant foreign minister for consular affairs. He added that the two boats would also be released on January 21. Abdel-Hakam urged Egyptian fishermen and sailors to respect the international conventions for seas. "Violating laws on fishing in territorial waters of other nation could result in fines, jailing or the sequestration of ships. Therefore, all Egyptians are urged to abide by these laws," he stated. Meanwhile, Somali pirates rejected an offer by the Red Sea Company to pay $500,000 for the release of the vessel ‘MV Suez' and its crew, kidnapped off Somalia more than four months ago, on the grounds that the company's offer had come too late. "The pirates rejected the offer due to its delay," the wife of an engineer on the boat said. The pirates declared the very least they would accept now is $1 million. The ship's crew is currently suffering from hunger, eating nothing but fish from the island where they are being held captive. The families of the kidnapped crew, meanwhile, condemned the Red Sea Company's cutting in half the pay of the ship's crew. On August 2, Somali pirates captured ‘MV Suez', a Panamanian registered ship belonging to the Red Sea Navigation Company on which 11 Egyptians were on board. Mohamed Abdel-Meguid, commercial director of the Red Sea Navigation Company, said at the time that the owners were ready to pay a reasonable ransom. "Unfortunately, the channels of communication with the Somali hijackers have been cut," explained Abdel-Meguid. “This is a tactic the pirates often use to exert pressure on the owners of ships to accept their conditions." The ‘MV Suez', which was carrying cement, was heading from Pakistan to Eritrea.
