CLOF – Container Liner Operators Forum
Fresh information from the IMB indicate that Somali pirates have released the Bermudan-flagged MV Talca that was seized on March 23 while en route to Iran from Egypt, leaving at least 19 vessels and more than 350 crew members still held in captivity.
Rampant piracy off the coast of the anarchic Horn of Africa nation has earned the gunmen tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, jacked up insurance premiums for ships and forced some to take longer, more costly routes to avoid pirate hotspots.
Andrew Mwangura, head of the East Africa Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, said he believed the crew of 23 Sri Lankans, one Filipino and one Syrian were safe. He said there had been no “quarrels” during nearly two months of negotiations.
“We received $2.5mn and freed the ship late last night. It sailed away and the crew were so happy,” a pirate who called himself Ali said from the pirate haven of Bargal.
It was not immediately possible to verify the ransom claim.
It was not immediately clear where the MV Talca, which has a dead weight of 11,055 tonnes, was heading following its release.
Meanwhile, a group of Somali pirates captured by the Russian navy in the Gulf of Aden and then set free in a boat are most probably dead after failing to reach the shore, a Russian defence source said in Moscow yesterday.
The 10 pirates were captured last week after seizing a Russian oil tanker but were then unexpectedly released, with Russian officials saying there was insufficient legal basis to keep them in detention.
“According to the latest information, the pirates who seized the Moscow University oil tanker failed to reach the shore. Evidently, they have all died,” the high-ranking source was quoted as saying by all Russia’s official news agencies.
The source said that radio signals from the boat stopped just one hour after it had been set free by the Russian navy. No details were given over the manner in which they could have lost their lives.
Reports have said that after their release the Russian navy put the pirates in a boat some 300 nautical miles offshore, removing all weaponry and navigational equipment from the vessel.
“It would have been more humane to have hung them up from the yardarm,” a rights activist, whose name was not given, told the Kommersant daily over the weekend.
Marines from the Russian destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov freed the tanker from the pirate’s grasp in a dawn operation last week hailed as exemplary by Russian defence experts and officials.
President Dmitry Medvedev said the raid was “sharp, professional and quick” and ordered medals for all those involved in the rescue.
The fate of the pirates had been a mystery.
Media had at the weekend published a picture taken by state media showing 10 pirates lying face down, hands tied behind their back on the red deck of the Russian ship.
A top naval official also told Kommersant that that Russian navy had originally planned to accompany the pirates to within 12 miles of the shore but the offer of escort was turned down.
But Somalia’s ambassador to Moscow, Mohammed Handule, denied that the Russian navy had acted improperly in the affair.
“Not one Somali or the government of our country sees Russia has being guilty in this. The Russian military showed they can act effectively so that not one crew member of the captured tanker was hurt.”
“This is the most important thing,” he said according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
In another development, the UN refugee agency yesterday called on states to give shelter to people fleeing Somalia even if they do not meet formal refugee criteria.
The UNHCR said it was changing its guidelines, which influence government policies, because it believed asylum seekers from central and southern Somalia needed international protection.
The move reflects the gravity of the humanitarian crisis in a country where lawlessness has allowed pirates to attack shipping in the Gulf of Aden, a major artery for oil cargoes.
“Conditions in Somalia have been steadily deteriorating for some time and are particularly acute in the central and southern areas of the country,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in Geneva.
People displaced by the fighting between the government and different rebel groups had little chance of relocating in central or southern areas, or finding shelter in the northern breakaway region of Somaliland or the semi-autonomous province of Puntland, she told a briefing.
Somalia already has 1.4mn internally displaced people, and about 575,000 have fled to neighbouring countries.
UNHCR is urging countries to take in refugees on a group basis if they cannot process individual applications. That could involve giving people temporary shelter even if they do not get full asylum status – an approach used by European countries during the war in Bosnia.
“It is our view that involuntary returns to central and southern Somalia under today’s circumstances would place individuals at risk,” Fleming said.
Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen are already taking in Somalis on a group basis, she said.
Europe Sets Record, Tries First Set of Somali Pirates
The first European trial of Somali pirates is set to open in the Netherlands where five men risk up to 12 years in jail for allegedly seeking to hijack a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden.
The suspects, aged 25 to 45, were arrested on January 2 last year after their high-speed boat with firearms was intercepted by a Danish frigate as they were allegedly preparing to board the Dutch Antilles-flagged Samanyolu.
The Netherlands issued European arrest warrants for the five three weeks later, and they were flown on a military plane from the Gulf state of Bahrain the following month to the Netherlands, where they have been in custody since.
A defence lawyer has said the five men would challenge the jurisdiction of Dutch courts to try the case.
The cargo vessel “was registered in the Dutch Antilles,” Haroon Raza told AFP.
The Antilles has its own justice system, “there is thus no reason to have a trial in the Netherlands.”
Raza, who represents alleged pirate Osman Musse Farah, said the men would also raise the length of their pre-trial detention.
“My client has a wife and two children; and one of them was born while he was in the Netherlands. He complains because he cannot answer their needs.”
At a hearing in May last year to determine whether the men should remain in custody, another lawyer for the suspects told the court “the pirates are poor fishermen who acted out of pure despair”.
But Ward Ferdinandusse argued for the prosecution at the time that “we mustn’t forget the interests of the ships and their crew who were shot at and held hostage”.
The trial is expected to last five days and judgment is set to be handed down on June 16, said Vincent de Winkel, a spokesman for the Rotterdam district court.
The men could be jailed for up to nine years, and their leader for up to 12 years.
According to the London-based International Maritime Bureau, which monitors maritime crime, pirates had attempted 217 attacks on merchant ships off the Somali coast in 2009, out of 409 pirate attacks worldwide.
Many of the suspects arrested in military operations in the Gulf of Aden in recent years have had to be set free for a lack of evidence.
“It is very difficult to obtain evidence against pirates unless they are caught in the act,” Bibi van Ginkel, a legal expert at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, told AFP.
“In the Gulf of Aden, fishermen also carry arms.”
SHIPTALK:
A GLOSSARY OF SHIPPING AND MARITIME TERMS
BACKHAUL: To haul a shipment back over part of a route which it has already traveled; a marine transportation carrier’s return movement of cargo, usually opposite from the direction of its primary cargo distribution.
BOLLARD: A line-securing device on a wharf around which mooring and berthing lines are fastened.
CAPTIVE CARGO PORT: When most of a port’s inbound cargoes are being shipped short distances and most of its export products come from nearby areas, the port is called a captive cargo port. (Contrast with a transit port.)
CHANDLERS: Like a hotel at sea, a ship needs many supplies to operate and serve its crew– groceries; paper products; engine parts; electronics; hardware; etc. A chandler sells these supplies to the ship’s agent. Originally, chandlers (candle makers) provided illumination to ships. Over time they expanded the variety of products they could provide to ships.
CHOCK: A piece of wood or other material put next to cargo to prevent it from shifting.
DEAD WEIGHT TONNAGE (DWT): Maximum weight of a vessel including the vessel, cargo and ballast.
NEO-BULK CARGO: Uniformly packaged goods, such as wood pulp bales, which stow as solidly as bulk, but are handled as general cargoes.
AUTOMATIC PILOT: An instrument that controls automatically a vessel’s steering gear to enable her to follow a pre-determined track through the water.
CLASSIFICATION SOCIETY – Private organisations that undertake inspections and provide advise on the hull and machinery of a ship, also supervise ships during their construction and afterwards in respect to their seaworthiness. Ships are then referred to as being ‘in class’. Although not compulsory, an unclassed ship will find it difficult to attract insurance.
CLEAN SHIP – Refers to tankers which have their cargo tanks free of traces of dark persistent oils, which remain after carrying crudes and heavy fuel oils.
SAFETY 2
NIGERIA, IN THE NEWS AGAIN:
Owners of Hijacked Ship Says Abducted Sailors Are In Nigeria, But Are In Good Health
Two Russian sailors abducted from their ship off Cameroon are in good health and may have been taken by their captors to neighbouring Nigeria, said the ship’s owner and the Seafarers’ Union of Russia.
Unidentified gunmen raided the Greek-owned cargo ship North Spirit on May 16 while it was at anchor off the port of Douala, taking the captain and chief engineer in an attack that analysts say marks an expansion in the range of West African piracy.
The pirates also attacked a nearby Lithuanian vessel, Argo, seizing that ship’s captain and robbing its safe.
The captain of the North Spirit “was allowed to make a call last night and said he and his crew mate were alive and in good health,” said Vadim Ivanov, spokesman for the Seafarers’ Union of Russia. “He said they had been taken by sea to Nigeria.”
The captain, Boris Tersintsev, is from Vladivostok. The other kidnapped Russian, Igor Shumik, was aboard the Arctic Sea ship that mysteriously disappeared in a purported pirate attack last summer.
The North Spirit raid is the latest in a string of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, a region stretching from the Guineas in the northwest to Angola in the south, that is an increasingly important source of oil to Western markets.
Negotiators hired by the insurance company of the Greek ship owner, Balthellas Chartering, are trying to make contact with the pirates to secure the sailors’ release.
“They are trying to start [negotiations], but the pirates haven’t contacted them yet,” said Panayotis Nikoletos, Balthellas’ operations manager.
He said he believed that the Lithuanian captain was with the two Russians and added that the company was trying to confirm reports that the three were in Nigeria.
A spokesman for Limarko, owner of the Argo, declined to comment.
Analysts said the attack near the port of Douala — which serves land-locked Chad and Central African Republic, as well as some parts of the two Congos — showed that pirates in the region were venturing further south and were becoming more brazen.
Attacks in the Gulf of Guinea have mostly been clustered off the Bakassi Peninsula on the restive Nigeria-Cameroon border where various armed groups operate.
Cameroon last month blamed piracy for part of a 13 percent slide in oil production in 2009. The country’s output averaged 73,000 barrels per day last year, down from 84,000 bpd in 2008.
Attacks in the Gulf of Guinea are not on the scale of those off Somalia, where pirates are earning tens of millions of dollars from seizing merchant vessels, but analysts say the insecurity off West Africa could affect shipping and investment.
The U.S. military is training West and Central African navies and coast guards to combat piracy, drug smuggling and illegal fishing in the Gulf of Guinea — a region that Washington estimates will supply a quarter of U.S. oil by 2015.
US Arrests Piracy ‘Founder’, Abshir Abdillahi
After years of wreaking havoc on the open ocean, Somali pirates are being squeezed on land and sea by authorities and a militant group looking to put them out of business.
Security forces in northern Somalia arrested a prominent pirate on a U.S. government watchlist during a raid against 12 pirates, an official said last week.
The raid in the northern region of Puntland is another worry for pirates, who already face arrest by international warships off the coast of East Africa. Pirates also fled a den in northern Somalia last month after militants moved into the town of Haradhere, though the EU Naval Force says pirates continue to operate there.
“Pirates are being challenged everywhere,” said Abdirahman Badiyo, a history professor at Mogadishu University. “They are on the run. And they are most likely regrouping and reorganizing.”
The gang of 12 arrested Tuesday last week was targeted in an operation aimed at cracking down on pirates in the relatively calm Puntland, where politicians are accused of helping seajackers and taking a cut of the ransoms, said Abdi Hirsi Qarjab, the governor of Nugal region.
Abshir Abdillahi, who is also known as Abshir Boyah, was captured as he tried to flee the town of Garowe, Qarjab said. He said $29,500 in cash and two pistols were recovered from his car. Three other cars belonging to the brigands were also seized.
Boyah was one of the founders of the piracy trade in the region and continued to invest in it despite recent claims that he had sworn off piracy, Qarjab said.
Qarjab said he recently met with a NATO commander onboard a warship and they discussed how Somali authorities and NATO officials can complement each other in their efforts against pirates.
“There is a cooperation between us and the countries that sent warships to Somali waters to fight piracy,” said Qarjab. “We will do everything to end piracy business in our region.”
The U.S. Treasury Department last month froze the assets of nearly a dozen suspected Islamist militants in Somalia, including the 44-year-old Abdillahi’s. Qarjab said authorities had no plan to hand him over to the U.S.
“The court will decide their fate,” he said, adding that the U.S. action had no bearing on Tuesday’s arrest.
“Boyah is a well-known pirate. He is a threat to our security and that is why we captured him together with others,” Qarjab said. Boyah was transferred to a prison in the town of Bossaso, where nearly 400 pirates are being held.
The region’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Farole, promised last year to end piracy in the area, and authorities have since arrested dozens of pirates.
President Barack Obama gave Treasury officials broader power last month to deal with a deteriorating security situation in Somalia by allowing them to sanction or freeze the assets of individuals involved in piracy off Somalia’s coast or militants who have done anything to threaten the shaky nation’s stability.
The executive order targets anyone who threatens the peace, interferes with the delivery of humanitarian assistance or violates the United Nations arms embargo in the lawless nation.
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