Pemba - marine research - diver shot

[paddyp]

I've copied this from the lonely planet diving forum. It's a reply, by someone who was there, to much speculation over the dive company, the organising group (Frontier) and the general details of the incident.

link is - (to view any replies)
"http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/messagepost.cfm?postaction=reply&catid=33&threadid =538037&messid=4495048&STARTPAGE=1&parentid=0&from =1"

main thread as follows : -

Robbery in Pemba

Let me put a few points staright - I was there.

The robbery is believed to have been carried out by men from the mainland - not Pemba!

The bullet was a 9mm. It entered the girls back, exited her buttock and entered the guys leg where it lodged itself. The only other gun that was seen was a revolver of some sort. All of the other robbers had machetes. The machetes were used on us but only the flat of the blade - to get a more rapid reaction from us I would imagine. Indiscriminate kicks to heads and other body parts were also used to good effect, as were other techniques!

We do not know exactly how many men were robbing us as we were all face down in the sand for the duration of the attack (roughly an hour we think), although it is thought to be about 6-8 people. One of the robbers was dressed in a Police uniform but it was unkown when I left as to wether or not he was Police or the uniform had been stolen. We think that it was the same men who came into camp a little earlier to 'say hello' and were apparently there to check on us as there were "bad people in the area"!!!!! Go figure!!!!! There was understandably a lot of confusion amongst our group for the duration of the attack. A small number of men were controling us whilst others were going through the rest of the camp.

Frontier have (or are in the process of) refunded all monies paid by the research assistants for the different expedition lengths. They (Frontier) were not too forthcoming about this refund and it is generally felt that the media pressure paid a significant part in Frontiers decision to give the refund to us. Frontier were not too helpful initially and only time will tell wether their performance and post attack care will improve.

The local camp staff were not armed at all. There were less staff on duty that night than had been recommended by the initial camp security assessment. 1 Member of local staff ran off when he heard the attack in progress to prevent himself from either being beaten and tied up, or shot.

The camp on Pemba is now closed and Frontier are moving the research facility to Mafia Island. I do not know any details (security or otherwise) about this new camp other than the work being planned there will be used as a comparison to their original data collected on the Island.

Frontiers performance to date has been less than satisfactory and any assistance or refunds given so far has been won only through dogged negotiations and demands. Some of which took days. Days of additional stress and mis-information that none of the party involved in the attack really needed.

Insurance settlements for monies and personal possessions taken during the attack are still being negotiated, although the general impression given to me by Frontier staff today is that things are not looking too good for refunds of expensive items such as cameras or dive watches. This is due to the limited nature of the insurance policies that were organised through Frontier and Endsleigh.

There are obviously a lot of outstanding issues still to be resolved and I could go on about it for hours - suffice to say that things are far from being resolved.

It is thought that the attack was carried out by the same gang that have carried out other attacks. And Frontier have not responded to questions about why we were not told about earlier attacks prior to going on the expedition.

Would I go back to Pemba? Certainly - but I would fly in rather than take the ferry, and I would go there in a group of no more than 4 or 5. Our group of 24 (including all of our kit) attracted a lot of attention at the ports of Dar, Unguja, and Pemba. There were a lot of people about and any one of them could have been directly or indirectly involved.

Would I go with Frontier again - NO WAY!!!!!!!!! They didnt lie - they just ommitted huge amounts of what i would consider to be - critical information. Information that had I known prior to paying, I would have decided not to go at all.

We had an extrordinary amount of assistance from Pemba divers and I must say a big thank you to them. To have that many stressed people land on your door step cant be good for business, but without them I do not know where we would have gone as Frontier certainly had NO evacuation plan for this eventuality! And, at the time, we did not know if the police were involved or not - although they were more than helpful the following morning.
And an appology to any visitors that were there when we were, as we undoubtedly kept them awake for more hours than they initially wanted to be.

[wandernsoul]

Thanks for posting this paddyp. I've been in the planning stage of a trip there, and have been very interested in any info regarding this.
Tough break for those volunteers.

[aquatic badger]

I was on a prior expedition to Pemba with frontier, before the pirate attack. I had the time of my life there and all credit goes to the Pemba staff. I know that Frontier has had a lot of bad press recently and i sympathise with the group that were there when the attack happened but given another chance i would definitely go back there. The diving is amazing, the camp is beautiful and 99.999999999% of the locals are the friendliest people i have ever met, and i know would have done nothing to hurt us. Anyone who is thinking about cancelling a holiday to pemba, DON'T DO IT! Or atleast give the ticket to me! No, i couldn't guarentee that a similar attack might happen. But it could happen anywhere in the world, and this is a place not to be missed. If you spend all your life sticking to safe places you're seriously going to miss out. As for frontier, they are a good organisation. They may have made some mistakes recently but please don't let this put you off.