Pat Dollard

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It’s becoming rather stupidly obvious other countries using the waterway in that part of the world almost willingly allow themselves to fall prey to these scabby band of reprobate terrorists and their fishing boats and arms … When a simple gatling gun on the deck of a ship would not only solve an immediate pirating incident, but serve to deter any future attempts.

US Admiral ‘stunned’ by pirates’ reach

The top US military officer said Monday he was “stunned” by the reach of the Somali pirates who seized a Saudi supertanker off the east coast of Africa, calling piracy a growing problem that needs to be addressed.

But Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there were limits to what the world’s navies could do once a ship has been captured because national governments often preferred to pay pirates ransom.

“I’m stunned by the range of it, less so than I am the size,” Mullen said of the seizure of the Sirius Star Sunday by armed men.

The huge, oil laden prize, which is three times the size of a US aircraft carrier, was some 450 miles east of Kenya when it was boarded, he said.

That is the farthest out at sea that a ship has been seized in the latest surge of piracies, according to Mullen.

The pirates, he said, are “very good at what they do. They’re very well armed. Tactically, they are very good.”

“And so, once they get to a point where they can board, it becomes very difficult to get them off, because, clearly, now they hold hostages.

“The question then becomes, well, what do you do about the hostages? And that’s where the standoff is.

“That’s a national question to ask based on the flag of the vessel. And the countries by and large have been paying the ransom that the pirates have asked,” he said.

Mullen said the number of successful piracies have gone down, but the incidence of ship seizures were way up.

“It’s got a lot of people’s attention and is starting to have impact on the commercial side, which I know countries raise as a concern,” he said.

“And so there’s a lot more focus on this. It’s a very serious issue. It’s a growing issue. And we’re going to continue to have to deal with it,” he said.
(AFP)

However, for some bizarre and unintelligent reasoning countries such as Great Britain have decided it would be mean and unPC to actually stop this piracy of expensive sovereign ships and their important and oft times dangerous cargoes … and, oh hey hell, why not give them (the pirates) asylum while they’re at it? Eh …

Pirates can claim UK asylum

by Marie Woolf – (Times Online)

THE Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.

The Foreign Office has advised that pirates sent back to Somalia could have their human rights breached because, under Islamic law, they face beheading for murder or having a hand chopped off for theft.

In 2005 there were almost 40 attacks by pirates and 16 vessels were hijacked and held for ransom. Employing high-tech weaponry, they kill, steal and hold ships’ crews to ransom. This year alone pirates killed three people near the Philippines. (Continue Reading here)

Meanwhile, it’s become somewhat of a sport in the last year as the numbers of ships pirated has grown:

Somali Pirates Free Ship, Seize Another

By VOA News – 16 November 2008

Somali pirates have hijacked a chemical tanker with 23 crew members on board, soon after releasing another ship for which they received a ransom.

The South Korean foreign ministry says pirates seized the Chemstar Venus and its crew of five South Koreans and 18 Filipinos off the coast of Somalia late Saturday. The ship is owned by a Japanese company. There has been no word on the condition of the crew.

The hijacking came shortly after pirates freed another Japanese-owned chemical tanker, the Stolt Valor, on Saturday. Indian officials say all crew members aboard that ship are safe, including 18 Indians, two Filipinos, a Bangladeshi and a Russian.

Officials say a ransom was paid to the pirates, who seized the ship in September.

In a separate incident, Russia’s navy says its forces prevented the seizure of a Saudi-owned vessel during a pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden Saturday.

Russian officials say a navy warship was guarding three cargo vessels through the Gulf when it received a distress call from the Saudi ship, Rabih. Officials say navy forces repelled the pirates, who were approaching the Saudi ship on speedboats.

International Maritime officials say at leaset 83 have been attacked off Somalia this year, with 33 of them hijacked. The pirates are currently holding about 11 ships, including a Ukrainian cargo vessel carrying 33 tanks.

Somalia’s interim government is fighting a strengthening Islamist insurgency, and does not have forces to patrol its territorial waters.

Somali Pirates Seize Massive Saudi Oil Tanker Off Kenyan Coast

(FOX) – November 17, 2008

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — In one of their boldest hijacks yet, Somali pirates have seized a massive, Saudi-owned oil supertanker loaded with crude oil and carrying 25 crew members off the Kenyan coast, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

The hijacking was the latest in a surge in attacks this year by ransom-hungry Somali pirates and highlighted the vulnerability of even very large ships moving through the area. Attacks off the Somali coast have increased more than 75 percent this year.

After the brazen hijacking, the pirates took the ship to a Somali port that has become a haven for bandits and the ships they have seized, a Navy spokesman told the Associated Press.

The tanker, owned by Saudi oil company Aramco and operated by Vela International, is 1,080 feet, about the length of an aircraft carrier, making it one of the largest ships to sail the seas. It can carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, said the Sirius Star was carrying crude at the time of Saturday’s hijacking, but he did know how much. He also had no details about where the ship was sailing from and where it was headed.

“The Sirius Star … was seized by a group of armed men approximately 420 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia on Sunday,” a Vela International spokesman said. “All 25 crew members on board are reported to be safe and the vessel is fully laden with crude oil. Vela Response Teams have been mobilized and are working to ensure the safe release of the crew members and the vessel.”

While Saudi-owned television station Al Arabiya reported that the crew was released by the hijackers, both the U.S. Navy and Aramco said they had not received such information.

The ship was sailing under a Liberian flag and its 25-member crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

In a news release sent out on Monday from the 5th Fleet’s Middle East headquarters in Bahrain, the Navy said the large crude tanker Sirius Star was attacked more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, an area far south of the zone patrolled by international warships.

It was the farthest Somali pirates have traveled so far to hijack a ship, Christensen said.

By expanding their ability to attack so far out at sea, Somali pirates are “certainly a threat to many more vessels,” Christensen said.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said there were at least two British nationals aboard the MV Sirius Star, but said he could offer no further details on the ship or what had happened to it.

The Sirius Star was built in South Korea’s Daewoo shipping yards and commissioned in March. Classed as a Very Large Crude Carrier, the ship is 318,000 dead weight tons.

An operator with Aramco said there was no one available at the company to comment after business hours.

As pirates have become better armed and equipped, they have sailed farther out to sea in search of bigger targets, including oil tankers, among the 20,000 tankers, freighters and merchant vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden each year.

Somali pirates are trained fighters, often dressed in military fatigues, using speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment. They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rockets launchers and various types of grenades.

Raja Kiwan, a Dubai-based analyst with PFC Energy, said the hijacking raises “some serious questions” about what is needed to secure such ships when they are on the open seas.

“It’s not easy to take over a ship” as massive as an oil tanker, particularly VLCC’s that can transport about 2 million barrels of crude, he said, adding that such vessels typically have an armed security contingent on board.

Pirates have gone after oil tankers before.

In October, a Spanish military patrol plane thwarted pirates trying to hijack an oil tanker by buzzing them three times and dropping smoke canisters.

On April 21, pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades at a Japanese oil tanker, leaving a hole that allowed several hundred gallons of fuel to leak out, raising fears for the environment.

In September, three pirates in a speed boat fired machine guns at an Iranian crude oil carrier, though the ship escaped after a 30-minute chase.

Warships from the more than a dozen nations as well as NATO forces have focused their anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, increasing their military presence in recent months.

But Saturday’s hijacking occurred much farther south, highlighting weaknesses in the international response to the problem.

Graeme Gibbon Brooks, the managing director of British company Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service Ltd, said the increased international presence trying to prevent attacks is simply not enough.

“The coalition has suppressed a number of attacks … but there will never be enough warships. The whole area is 2.5 million square miles … the coalition have to act preemptively and be one step ahead of the pirates. The difficulty here is that the ship was beyond the area where the coalition were currently acting.”

He did not know whether the Saudi ship had weapons or a security team onboard, but said their location — 200 kilometers off the coast — may have given the crew a false sense of security.

Brooks said the tanker likely had been targeted by a group of pirates distinct from the attackers in Somalia’s Puntland region in the north, a notorious piracy hotspot.

The pirates in southern Somalia have not carried out any attacks this year, he said, probably because warships escorting food shipments from Mombasa to Mogadishu had been a deterrent.

“But now they see Puntland pirates appear to be operating impervious to the coalition. Perhaps they’ve drawn the same conclusion, that they can continue to carry out attacks,” he said.

I mean … We HAVE taken care of business in this matter before … why stop now?