Shipping firm head confirms safety of 3 abducted by pirates

The three crew members of a Japanese tugboat who were abducted by pirates in the Malacca Strait last week are all safe, the head of the shipping company that owns the boat said Monday.

Kanji Kondo, president of Kondo Kaiji Co., met the three — Captain Nobuo Inoue, 56, and chief engineer Shunji Kuroda, 50, both from Japan, and third engineer Edgardo Sadang, 41, from the Philippines — at a hotel in the southern Thai border town of Satun.