As of Monday last week, at least 56 foreign vessels plus two barges are in Somali hands against the will of their owners, while at least 886 hostages or captives – including a South-African yachting couple and a Danish yacht-family with three children and two friends – are being held, according to Ecoterra.
According to Ecoterra, “even EU NAVFOR, who mostly only counts high-value, often British insured vessels, admitted now that many dozens of vessels were sea-jacked despite their multi-million Euro efforts to protect shipping.”
As of Monday last week, at least 56 foreign vessels plus two barges are in Somali hands against the will of their owners, while at least 886 hostages or captives – including a South-African yachting couple and a Danish yacht-family with three children and two friends – are being held, according to Ecoterra.
According to Ecoterra, “even EU NAVFOR, who mostly only counts high-value, often British insured vessels, admitted now that many dozens of vessels were sea-jacked despite their multi-million Euro efforts to protect shipping.”
EU NAVFOR also admitted in February 2011 for the first time that actually a larger number of vessels and crews is held hostage than those listed on their file, Ecoterra said.
Since EU NAVFOR’s inception at the end of 2008 the piracy off Somalia started in earnest and it has now completely escalated, according to Ecoterra.
In close co-operation with Iranian fishermen and authorities, Ecoterra said that it could establish that in addition to its last listing at least 11 more Iranian fishing vessels with a minimum of a further 182 seamen are missing in connection with Somali piracy.
“Our sources from Somalia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, East Africa, the Maldives and other locations combined paint a grim picture in connection with the fate of these seafarers,” Ecoterra said.
Two further dhows are said to have reached their home port in Iran in the meantime and at least one dhow was over the last weekend shot up and set free by a Dutch warship.
“We are trying to establish the full identity also of those vessels, which we could not yet include in the status report below with date of the incident and exact crew numbers,” Ecoterra said, adding that “it remains clear that the still persistent neglect of pirated vessels from countries like Yemen, Pakistan, India and Iran paints a much more serious picture than what the navies present to the mainstream media on their public lists.”
Source: Eurasia Review
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