Warlords paying fishermen to attack, providing modern tools, say maritime experts
Washington Post
MOMBASA, KENYA - Under cover of darkness off the coast of Somalia, a gang of pirates turned off the engines to their three small speedboats, linked a ladder to an Indian cargo ship and ordered the crew to surrender, victims of the attack said.
Instead of swords and telescopes, the pirates brandished the modern tools of their trade: hand grenades, satellite phones, night-vision goggles and AK-47 assault rifles. They locked the crew members in the ship's cabin, beat some of them and demanded a $500,000 ransom.
Awaiting rescue, the crew scribbled "help" on wooden planks and secretly tossed them into the sea.
A boat the pirates had attempted to seize earlier had sent out a distress message, which was relayed to the USS Winston S. Churchill, a guided-missile destroyer plying the waters nearby. U.S. sailors freed the crew after five days, and 10 young Somalis were arrested and taken to a maximum-security prison in Mombasa, Kenya, the nearest port.
The incident is one in a surging number of suspected pirate attacks in the perilous waters off the coast of Somalia, a lawless country that has had no army, police, navy or coast guard since 1991. Last year, 35 pirate attacks were reported in the area, compared with two the year before, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a London-based watchdog group.
Maritime experts say powerful warlords in Somalia hire fishermen to commit acts of piracy, claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom from hijacked shipping boats from around the world. The warlords use the money to buy more sophisticated weapons and equipment, the experts say.
Two U.S. Navy warships returned fire on a group of suspected pirates off the Somali coast last month, killing one suspect and wounding five, said Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Forces Central Force at Bahrain. Ten of the suspects are in U.S. custody at sea, and two are being treated for injuries in an undisclosed country, Breslau said. A spokesman for the pirates has said the Americans fired first.
In November, Somali pirates attacked a Miami-based cruise liner with a rocket-propelled grenade and machine-gun fire, injuring one crew member but none of the 151 passengers. The ship fired an acoustic weapon that emitted a deafening bang, and the pirates fled.
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