About four days after Shipping Position Weekly reported exclusively that sea robbers attacked an Italian-flagged petroleum products tanker, MT DOMINIA, the Nigerian Navy last week paraded eight members of the notorious gang and accused them of terrorizing boats and ships within Nigerian waters.
The sea robbers whose identities were unknown as at when our correspondent scooped the story kidnapped three of the crew of the ship along with the ship which they took away with her products up to the Escarvos channels. We had reported that “the attackers came on board the vessel and for the next 14 hours terrorized the crew while ransacking the ship. They later left taking one of the vessel’s lifeboats and three of the crew” Some of the crew members were also seriously injured.
A highly placed security source had confirmed to our correspondent that the ship was indeed rescued by the Navy and that the ship actually loaded PMS.
But last week, the attackers were paraded by the Flag Officer Commanding, Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Ogbor who also said that the sea robbers were arrested after they attacked MT Dominia near Escravos in Warri, Delta State.
Giving a further detail into how the Navy got involved, the Naval chief disclosed that when the Navy got a report that the gang was operating on January 1, 2011, his command quickly dispatched a patrol boat to rescue the vessel.
According to him, naval personnel sighted two boats and fired two warning shots, which were rapidly replied by the boats and explained that the navy almost lost the chase because of poor visibility. Ogbor added that the attackers cut off all communication equipment and global positioning system, making the patrol boat to lose all contacts with the ship.
The naval boss disclosed that his men had to deploy sophisticated boats and helicopters to search for vessel and added that the search yielded fruits as some of the sea robbers eventually abandoned the ship somewhere between Lagos and Warri and soon after NN regional maritime awareness capability equipment located the ship anchored at Escravos. He added that the highjackers threw some of their more sophisticated guns into the sea when they discovered that they were going to be captured by the navy.
“A Cat class ship was dispatched to escort her to Lagos roadstead with the rest of the pirates inside the ship,” Ogbor said.
Items that were recovered from the gang include: currencies of various denominations from many countries, charms, Indian hemps, a dane gun, telephones, laptops, a telescope and desktop computers.
Discussion about this post