Somali pirates overpowered by US crew but captain still held prisoner

Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Xan Rice in Nairobi, Wednesday 8 April 2009 21.08 BST

When Somali pirates skimmed across the Indian Ocean and muscled their way aboard a US food aid ship today, it had all the hallmarks of a depressingly familiar scene: a hostage cargo ship, a vulnerable crew and a well-organised team of brigands with the firepower and knowhow to seize a ship and demand a fat ransom.

But as a dramatic tussle on the high seas played out tonight, it became clear this was a startlingly different confrontation to the regular string of hijackings and hostage-takings that have plagued the waters off the Horn of Africa in recent months.

The standoff was apparently defused when the 20-man crew turned on their captors and managed to overpower them, seizing one pirate and sending three others fleeing for their dinghy.

But the episode remained unresolved tonight: members of the crew said the pirates had escaped with the captain in tow, and the crew was negotiating for his return, offering food or anything else. The crew had held a pirate prisoner for 12 hours and released him in return for the captain, but the pirates had not kept their side of the bargain.

A US warship, the USS destroyer Bainbridge, was on its way to the area this evening. “We are trying to hold them off until the US ship arrives,” said Ken Quinn, second mate on the ship.

The drama began when the Maersk Alabama, a container vessel owned by the Danish shipping giant, was hijacked 280 miles southeast of Eyl off Somalia’s eastern coast this morning. It was the pirates’ sixth successful strike in the past fortnight. It was also the first US ship, and crew, to be seized by Somali pirates. Although hostages are seldom hurt while ransoms are negotiated, the kidnapping of Americans would pose serious concern in the White House.

Obama and the White House team had only arrived back in Washington at about 3am (EST) after a week-long tour of Europe and Iraq, but they monitored the crisis, facing the prospect of paying millions in ransom money, as other countries have done, or ordering military action.

Captain Joe Murphy, father of the ship’s second-in-command, Shane, and a lecturer at the Massacusetts Maritime Academy, said today that his son and other crew members had turned the tables on the captors. His son had recently talked to a class at the academy about the dangers of piracy.

The World Food Programme said the ship’s cargo included food aid due to be unloaded in Mombasa, Kenya.

The Alabama’s status is complicated by the fact that Maersk carries out contracts for the US department of defence, though the Pentagon denied it was doing so on this occasion.

Until now, only France has taken firm action against pirates that kidnapped its citizens. In April last year French commandos arrested six gunmen on Somali soil after they had released 30 French hostages aboard a luxury yacht following a ransom payment. In September, the French equivalent of the British Special Boat Services launched a nighttime raid to free a retired couple held hostage on their yacht. In both cases the pirates were reportedly tracked from Djibouti, where the US also has a large military base.

The attack came a day after the US navy issued a warning to merchant shipping companies of heightened risk of attack in the Indian Ocean. It cited the case of the Africa Star, an Israeli boat whose crew rigged barbed wire along the sides of the ship, successfully preventing a pirate gang from boarding on Saturday.

During the dramatic surge in piracy off Somalia last year most of the attacks took place in the Gulf of Aden on the country’s northern coast, a vital waterway linking the Mediterranean with the Arabian Sea.

Global concern over the damage to international shipping saw the deployment in the Gulf of Aden of more than 20 international warships in three separate forces led by the US, Nato and EU. This significantly dented the pirates’ effectiveness, with only two successful hijackings reported in January and February, and more than 100 gunmen arrested.

But the slump in attacks was also due to the rough seas brought by the winter monsoon. As soon as the waters became calmer in March – a situation expected to persist until October – the hijackings resumed, with the pirates switching their focus to the Indian Ocean, where there are few warships.

Using previously captured mother ships as bases, and sophisticated GPS systems, the pirates can attack up to 500 miles out to sea, and are now striking unchallenged as far south as the top of the Mozambique channel, near the Seychelles.

At the time of the attack on the Alabama the closest American warship was 345 miles away. “The area we’re patrolling is more than a million miles in size. Our ships cannot be everywhere at every time,” said a US navy spokesman .

Source: Guardian

Published by: Qalinle Hussein

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