2008 Somali Pirate Haul: $150M + Benefits
Huge Ransoms Paid To GPS-Equipped Criminals; Anti-Piracy Warships Hindered By Lack Of Mandate
-
-
(CBS)
-
Eight Somali pirates sit at the Kenya Ports Authority Port Police station, in Mombasa on Nov. 18, 2008, where they are being held after being handed over to the Kenyan authorities by the Royal Navy. The eight pirates were arrested, and three others killed, by sailors of HMS Cumberland, as they attempted to hijack a cargo ship off the Horn of Africa. (AP)
-
In this photo released by the United States Navy, the crew of the merchant vessel MV Faina stand on the deck of the ship, accompanied by Somali pirates, Oct. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/US Navy)
-
The Liberian-flagged, Saudi-owned oil supertanker MV Sirius Star is seen at anchor on Nov. 19, 2008 off the coast of Somalia. The massive ship, its crew of 25 and its cargo of approximately $100 million worth of crude oil is under the control of Somali pirates. (U.S. Navy/William S. Stevens)
-
This July 31, 2004 file photograph shows Indian naval ship INS Tabar, a stealth frigate being received by family members and children of Indian naval personnel as it arrives in Mumbai, India. (AP Photo/Rajesh Nirgude, File)
-
-
Play CBS Video Video Pirate Hijacks On The Rise Pirates off the Somali coast continue to hijack ships and hold them for ransom. Mark Phillips reports. Also Current TV's Kaj Larsen, discusses his experience covering these elusive characters.
-
Fast Facts Somalia Learn about the people, economy and history.
In the past two weeks Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates have seized eight vessels including a huge Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil. Several hundred crew are now in the hands of Somali pirates.
"We are advised that in the last 12 months, ransom to the excess of $150 million has been paid to these criminals and that is why they are becoming more and more audacious in their activities," Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula said.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said Friday that the Saudi government was not and would not negotiate with pirates, but what the ship's owners did was up to them.
Meanwhile, the world's largest oil tanker company warned that it may divert cargo shipments, which would boost costs up to 40 percent.
Frontline Ltd., which ferries five to 10 tankers of crude a month through the treacherous Gulf of Aden, said it was negotiating a change of shipping routes with some of its customers, including oil giants Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.
Martin Jensen, Frontline's acting chief executive, said that sending tankers around South Africa instead would extend the trip by 40 percent.
Bermuda-based Frontline plans to make a decision whether to change shipping routes within a week, Jensen said.
"It's not only our costs, but also those of the people who have a $100 million cargo on board," Jensen said. "We're not going to make a unilateral decision so we've been debating this with our customers."
A.P Moller-Maersk, the world's largest container-shipping company, on Thursday ordered some of its slower vessels to avoid the Gulf of Aden and head the long way around Africa.
The Copenhagen-based company said it was telling ships "without adequate speed," mainly tankers, to sail the long route around Africa unless they can join convoys with naval escorts in the gulf, group executive Soeren Skou said.
The company didn't say how many ships would be affected by the decision, but said it usually has eight tanker transits in the area per month. The company says it handles 16 percent of the world's container-shipping traffic.
And Norwegian shipping group Odfjell SE on Wednesday ordered its more than 90 tankers to avoid the Gulf of Aden because of the risk of attack by pirates.
A Russian frigate, meanwhile, was escorting nine ships in the pirate-infested waters off the coast of Somalia, Russian news agencies reported. They included a Russian vessel and eight other commercial ships flying flags of Liberia, the Marshall Islands and the Cayman Islands.
The Somali pirates have the support of their communities and rogue members of the government. Often dressed in military fatigues, pirates travel in open skiffs with outboard engines, working with larger ships that tow them far out to sea. They use satellite navigational and communications equipment and an intimate knowledge of local waters, clambering aboard commercial vessels with ladders and grappling hooks.
They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers and grenades - weaponry that is readily available throughout Somalia.
Kaj Larsen, a filmmaker who produced a documentary on pirates in southeast Asia, told CBS' The Early Show that hijacking a cargo ship is "extraordinarily easy."
Larsen said the only difference between the methods of pirates today compared with those of centuries past is the use of AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
On Thursday, the African Union urged the United Nations to quickly send peacekeepers to Somalia but that appeared unlikely anytime soon. A U.N. peacekeeping operation in the early 1990s saw the downing of two U.S. Army helicopters and killing of 18 American soldiers. The U.S. withdrew and U.N. peacekeepers were gone by 1995.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize its sanctions committee to recommend people and entities that would be subject to an asset freeze and travel ban for engaging in or supporting acts that threaten peace in Somalia, for violating a U.N. arms embargo, and for obstructing delivery of humanitarian aid.
NATO, the United States, Russia, India and several other countries have warships patrolling on anti-piracy missions off Somalia. NATO warships work to prevent hijackings, but are hampered by a lack of a mandate to bring the criminals to justice. Many European countries also have restrictions on how far their ships can go to engage the pirates.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.
Posted by incog-nito at 08:10 PM : Nov 21, 2008
You sound like a mafioso. We libs like to obey the law, no matter how much it hurts. It''s called being patriotic. Anyhow, the pirates will get theirs in the end. Crime doesn''t pay, only temporarily
I wonder what their health, dental & 401K programs offer.
How do young men survive in a country with no viable government or economy? If no one cares to provide answers or options, then any method employed to generate income for survival and self-preservation should self- insulate itself from the criticism of the victims. If abandoned, retaliate against civility encouraging co-existence. Get paid and use all means necessary to collect. Dying in obscurity in a land of the forgotten, as fat, corrupt, and unscrupulous capitalists drink to distant misery is a drunken author%u2019s imagination.
No country should be excluded or isolated from the global economic participation (we are witnessing the Somali interpretation of global economic participation). If poverty in developing countries keeps hell-rocketing to the depths of unfathomable crisis, then acts of desperation never encountered will emerge.
Yeah. They''re so stupid they will probably blow up the tanker. Idiots.
Wild!
Islamists say they''ll fight Somali pirates
Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR, Associated Press Writer Mohamed Sheikh Nor, Associated Press Writer %u2013 36 mins ago Play Video AP %u2013 Shipping route changes because of pirates
MOGADISHU, Somalia %u2013 A radical Islamic group in Somalia said Friday it will fight the pirates holding a Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil.
Abdelghafar Musa, a fighter with al-Shabab who claims to speak on behalf of all Islamic fighters in the Horn of Africa nation, said ships belonging to Muslim countries should not be seized.
"We are really sorry to hear that the Saudi ship has been held in Somalia. We will fight them (the pirates)," Musa told AP Television News.
--------------------------
What if Blackbeard had had an AK-47. I smell an SNL skit.
My kids like pirates. Should I be worried? Garrrrr.
-------------------------------
We could take that oil tanker, raft a napalm factory ship (our engineers are now finishing up designing) next to it and start producing the stuff right there, it''d be easy.
- by clathrate November 21, 2008 3:32 PM EST
- How incredibly stupid. What has our world come to when our military has to obey some pantywaisted "mandate" to attack and kill terrorist pirates.
- Reply to this comment
See all 16 CommentsNapalm the whole *** country if that''s what it takes. This is absurd!