STATUS OF SEIZED VESSELS AND CREWS IN SOMALIA, THE GULF OF ADEN AND THE INDIAN OCEAN (ecoterra - 22. December 2010)
Please note a new additional EMERGENCY HELPLINE number: +254-719-603-176
STATUS-SUMMARY:
Albert Einstein: Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
No matter what the navies say: Today, 22. December 2010, 21h00 UTC, at least 40 foreign vessels plus one barge are kept in Somali hands against the will of their owners, while at least 688 hostages or captives - including a South-African yachting couple - suffer to be released.
Request the Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor from ECOTERRA Intl. for background info and see the updated map of the PIRACY COASTS OF SOMALIA.
WHAT NAVIES NEVER SEE:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/fighting_for_control_of_somali.html
What Foreign Soldiers and even their Officers Never Seem to Know:
The Scramble For Somalia
LATEST:
NO HAPPY SOLSTICE FOR HOSTAGES IN SOMALIA
NOW ALMOST 700 SEAFARERS HELD HOSTAGE IN SOMALIA !
Number of sea-jacked vessels exceeds the pirates' catch of 2009 - all time record, despite the fact that over 25 nations regularly patrol these waters. While billions are spend for the militarization and mercenaries still no help is coming forward to pacify and develop the coastal areas of Somalia.
TWO SRI LANKA FISHING VESSELS SEA-JACKED, THIRD ONE FREE (ecop-marine)
In what is said to be the first recorded instances where Sri Lankan fishermen have been targeted by Somali pirates FV LAKMALI was seized November 30, 2010.
The vessel was then apparently released after another one, FV LAKMINI 03 with six crew was captured. FV LAKMALI is now in Minicoy island together with four crew members, sources close to the Sri Lankan government reported.
However, two Sri Lankan fishermen from that vessel were taken hostage by the Somali pirates an transferred to one of the two vvessels with which they escaped. A ministry spokesman said the two abducted fishermen had been identified as Lal Fernando and Sugath Fernando, who had gone fishing fromBeruwala in their boat "Lakmali" on November 20. They were taken hostage ten days later while in international waters, when pirates arrived in another commandeered vessel, the FV KANTARI 12.
The present location of FV KANTARI 12 as well as FV LAKMINI 03 are unknown, since they seem not to have arrived at the Somali coast and it is feared now that they will probably conducting mothership operations the 15North-60East area.
Meanwhile a group of 11 Sri Lankan sailors who were held hostage for some 10 months by Somali pirates on their vessel MT NISR AL SAUDI will arrive home by tomorrow. The group has already left the Omani port of Salalah and was heading for the capital Muscat where they are scheduled to board a flight to Colombo, Captain, S. H. R. Kumar said. They were sea-jacked by the pirates on March 8 this year and released on December 7 after the ship owner paid an undisclosed sum in ransom to the pirates.
©2010-ecoterra/ecop-marine
From the SMCM (Somali Marine and Coastal Monitor): (and with a view on news with an impact on Somalia)
The continuing plight of the sailors
Efforts must be stepped up to free them (DailyStar)
The state of uncertainty over the fate of the crew of MV Jahan Moni continues. There is little sign of any progress having been made where freeing the crew, now captive at the hands of Somali pirates, is concerned. Since December 5, when the 26 Bangladeshis aboard the vessel were seized off the coast of Somalia, not much headway has been made in the matter of resolving the crisis. It appears that the government has either been playing a rather cautious role or is inclined to think that the problem will somehow sort itself out. To be sure, the authorities have given it out that they are trying out every means possible to free the captives, among whom is the wife of a member of the crew. That has not been enough. And judging by the result as also the feelings of the families of the captive sailors, there is a clear need for the Bangladesh government to go into high gear in the matter of bringing the crew as well as the ship back home in all safety.
The only development in the crisis so far is the demand from the pirates, as the families of the captives tell us, for a ransom of $9 million from the owning company of the vessel. That demand was made on 12 December, after which ten days have gone by. The worry now is whether the captives are in good shape or not. We would not like to speculate on the worst, but we do bear in mind the fact that the Somali pirates told the owners on 12 December that unless the ransom was made over to them within five days, they would take the lives of the crew. That was a dire threat and one hopes the captors of the crew will not carry it out. But beyond that, the danger for the sailors clearly grows with each passing day. The feeling rises among the families of the hostages that the government may not have been active about bringing a speedy end to the crisis. They have now sought the prime minister's intervention in the matter, for understandable reasons.
The dark nature of the situation cannot be lost on anyone. The Somali pirates have been terrorizing international shipping for long months. With their record for extreme ferocity and inhabiting a country which today is a collapsed state, it is difficult to engage them in direct negotiations. Even so, the government must step up its efforts toward freeing the sailors through making use of every available link. The threat hanging over them is a call for strong, meaningful action on the part of the government.
Meanwhile the government Wednesday asked families of the sailors who were on board the Bangladeshi ship Somali pirates hijacked in the Arabian Sea to have patience, saying such rescue might take a long period of time.
"This kind of rescue takes some time, you understand. We're trying our best to ensure safe and secured return of all Bangladeshis who were on board the ship," Foreign Minister Dr. Dipu Moni said while talking with distressed families of the sailors.
The owners of the ship are also trying their best to secure the sailors' safe rescue, she added.
Piracy "Business" is Booming - for insurers and navies as well as missionaries, mercenaries and mischiefs.
Ship underwriters widen Somali piracy threat zone By Jonathan Saul (reuters)
London's marine insurance market has widened the stretch of waterways deemed at high risk from Somali pirates as the armed gangs strike further out at sea, industry officials say.
The move is expected to raise insurance premiums for ship owners, reflecting the growing pirate threat.
Pirates are making tens of millions of dollars in ransoms from seizing merchant ships in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, despite the efforts of foreign navies to clamp down on such attacks.
In recent weeks, pirates have struck as far south as Tanzania and Madagascar, with the easternmost attack yet this month close to the coast of India.
"There is no question the pirates have got big mother ships out there," Neil Roberts, a senior technical executive with the Lloyd's Market Association (LMA), told Reuters.
"These are long range vessels which can support operations much further off Somalia," said Roberts, whose association represents all underwriting businesses in the Lloyd's insurance market.
The Joint War Committee, which groups syndicate members from the LMA and representatives from the London insurance company market, last week added the Gulf of Oman and a wider stretch of the Indian Ocean to a list of areas it considered high risk for merchant vessels and prone to war, strikes, terrorism and related perils.
"We are recognising the developing threat that is out there. Ship owners are on their own to some extent at the further reaches," Roberts said.
"It's our job to notify when there is a problem and there certainly is," he said.
Analysts said merchant shipping faced mounting costs.
"The number of hijackings is increasing, and insurers will presumably have to charge more in order to be able to financially absorb the greater cost of claims," said John Drake, senior risk consultant with AKE Ltd.
ARMED RESPONSE
J. Peter Pham, an African security adviser to U.S. and European governments and private companies, said ships transiting the western Indian Ocean were likely to see an increase in insurance premiums.
"I would anticipate that the cost of piracy 'riders' on insurance will rise to reflect this real risk over a larger area," he said.
Despite successful efforts to quell attacks in the Gulf of Aden, international naval forces have struggled to contain piracy in the Indian Ocean owing to the vast distances involved.
This has led to mounting worries among ship owners and seafarers who feel their lives are in the firing line as pirates launch increasingly violent attacks.
"The threat to seafarers who have to run a gauntlet of small arms fire and risk of capture and incarceration is unacceptable," said Peter Hinchliffe, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, which represents about 80 percent of the global industry.
Some shipping companies and a growing number of mariners are backing the use of private armed guards on board vessels.
"We are now not opposed to the use of armed guards on ships," said Andrew Linington, with seafarers' union Nautilus International.
"With this massive expansion of piracy areas, it becomes more essential that seafarers have some form of protection. There is only so much naval forces are able to do."
France passes law beefing up navy's anti-piracy powers (AFP)
France's parliament on Wednesday passed a law giving French naval forces sweeping legal powers to detain and send for trial pirates irrespective of their nationality or that of their victims.
The law gives French authorities "practically universal jurisdiction to judge acts of piracy committed outside France whatever the nationality of the boat or of the victims," provided the culprits are arrested by French forces.
The law reintroduces the concept of piracy into French law after it was removed in 2007.
It effectively gives French naval commanders, who are taking part in the European Union's anti-piracy force in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, the same powers as French police heading criminal investigations.
Many pirates are released after being captured because of the lack of a legal framework to arrest them and bring them to trial.
The law reintroduces the concept of piracy into French law after it was removed in 2007.
It effectively gives French naval commanders, who are taking part in the European Union's anti-piracy force in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, the same powers as French police heading criminal investigations.
Many pirates are released after being captured because of the lack of a legal framework to arrest them and bring them to trial.
Kenya's high seas declared war zone as pirate attacks rise By Seve Mbogo (December 22 2010 Nation/BusinessDaily)
Kenya's piracy prone high seas have been declared a war zone by an association of global insurers, who underwrite war risks, in a move that has led to the doubling of freight and marine insurance costs.
The declaration was made by what is known as the Joint War Committee, which is made up of leading insurers such as Chartis, Munich Re and Swiss Re, and was prompted by rising incidents of piracy in Kenya's waters.
Official data shows that this year alone, nine pirate attacks have occurred within Kenya's exclusive economic zone, which is 360km from the coastline compared to zero incidents last year.
In one case on October 29, pirates attacked and seized the MV Ayala about 30km from the Kenyan coastline.
This has seen the cost of freight increase from $15 a tonne (Sh1,200) to $30 (Sh2,400).
Insurers have also introduced a piracy surcharge of 0.05 per cent of the value of the cargo.
The surge in freight costs is expected to pile inflationary pressure on the consumer goods market as importers pass on additional costs to consumers at a time when commodity prices are also rising.
Petroleum products, industrial machinery, second-hand motor vehicles, metal products and raw materials are some of the key items whose prices are expected to come under pressure.
"The declaration means that the cost of shipping all goods, including petroleum products, across the Indian Ocean will increase," said oil marketer KenolKobil in a statement.
The company said that additional shipping costs have been brought about by hiring private armed escorts, ships using longer routes to avoid hot stops and insurance costs.
A report from Prime Minister Raila Odinga's office says there is evidence that the pirates have in recent months concentrated their activities close to or within the Kenyan territory away from the Gulf of Aden transport corridor that is now closely monitored by the European Union, Nato, the US and Chinese war ships.
A statement signed by the JWC secretary Neil Roberts noted that "Somalia, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, and Southern Red Sea" waters as war zones.
This means that vessel owners will pay an additional insurance premium to cover the war risks.
The committee is influential as it brings together most of the companies that underwrite war risks.
Mr Odinga warned earlier that concentration of pirates close to the Kenyan coast could force the country to use the more expensive air transport to import raw materials and finished goods – with serious consequences on consumer prices and ultimately the inflation rate.
Piracy premium
"This will increase costs and reduce our competitive edge at a time when the Kenyan economy is showing significant growth potential," said Mr Odinga.
Kenyan industrialists said increased risk of piracy attacks has pushed up freight and insurance costs of shipping raw materials, which must be ultimately passed on to the consumer in the form of higher retail prices.
"Consumers throughout East Africa are paying a piracy premium on every good that is manufactured using imported materials," said Vimal Shah, the managing director of Bidco Oils Limited, a consumer goods manufacturer. "It can only be expected that price inflation will continue so long as the risk of attacks persist."
Kenya imports large amounts of finished or semi-processed consumer goods including crude oil, maize, wheat, motor vehicle parts, iron and steel, according to Economic Survey of 2010.
Andrew Mwangura, the head of Seafarers Assistance Programme (SAP), said in the past three months most vessels have been attacked while heading to the port of Mombasa or leaving for Dar es Salaam and Maputo.
"Such attacks are sending the wrong signal to sea carriers with serious implications on freight charges," he said.
Data released by SAP in November shows that shippers are paying an additional of Sh7,600 for every 20-foot container and an extra Sh1,200 for every tonne of oil and bulk grain cargo imported through the port of Mombasa.
Cargo owners are also required to pay additional fuel charges incurred when the vessels take longer routes to avoid the pirates.
Vessels headed for Mumbai from Mombasa are now taking 18 days up from an average of 12 days it took to make the same journey three years ago, while those coming from Dubai are taking 12 days up from seven, sailing away from pirate infested waters.
Ashok Shah, the chief executive officer of APA Insurance company said the industry has introduced a piracy surcharge on top of the normal premium charged on cargo.
The piracy surcharge now stands at an average rate of 0.05 per cent of the value of the cargo.
Marine insurance rates without piracy surcharge range from 0.4 per cent of the value of the cargo to five per cent, depending on the nature of the cargo and its packaging.
N.B.: And surely enough oil-companies like Israeli-owned Kenol/Kobil - unimpressed by the usual drum-beating of the energy minister - will further raise their pump-rises together with others in the Kenyan oil-cartel and base their line of argument again on the pirates, though worldwide the oil-prices and shipping costs decline and the storage shortage at the terminal in Mombasa is caused by a tussle with National Oil. Piracy is bad not so much for its direct impact - except for those who really suffer, which are the often totally neglected seafarers, but in the way it is misused by everybody to make money instead of solving the real problems.
A mercenary solution to Somali piracy by A.J. (The Econimist)
COULD 2011 see the return of the days when seaborne piracy was a very risky profession? The failure of various navies to restrict the flourishing business of Somali buccaneers is forcing the maritime community to try a new approach. Mercenaries—or as they prefer to be called, "private security organisations"—may finally play a helping role.
The hottest initiative comes from an alliance of insurance companies, led by Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT), who are apparently proposing the creation of a "private navy" under a scheme called the Convoy Escort Programme (CEP). A heavily armed, 150-strong security team on patrol boats would escort merchant vessels through the dangerous waters off Somalia and far out into the Indian Ocean.
The idea itself is not fresh. However, previous attempts to market private maritime security have not been successful. Shipping companies were reluctant to pay mercenary fees on top of already expensive insurance expenses. For that reason, the notorious private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide had to drop a similar project back in 2008. The legal issues that could follow pirate deaths were the second reason why shipping companies were not attracted to the idea. Although there are still a few private maritime security firms that employ Blackwater's techniques, none of those operate on a large scale.
Why may CEP succeed where others have failed? One reason is that the insurance powerhouses like JLT, Ascot Underwriting and Chartis behind CEP have enough clout and expertise to pull it off. CEP offers shipowners something long desired—armed protection as a free perk to seven days' war-risks cover. This would be an attractive alternative to steep insurance premiums on transiting pirate-infested waters. In addition, since the main role of CEP security personnel will not be to hunt down pirates, but to deter them from attacking the protected vessels, the potential for legal issues will be smaller. On the other hand, armed mercenaries are not scarecrows and will use force if necessary, so providing a good chance for "unfortunate accidents" in high seas.
If so, the pirates had it coming. It is easy to understand the rage of ship owners as each successful seizure of a vessel costs an average of $9m in ransom payments and lost earnings.
An even higher price is paid by the the crews of hijacked ships in terms of their physical and emotional stress.
Of course, it is doubtful that a "private navy" will instantly change everything. Piracy will only end once Somalia itself becomes a stable nation—and that goal lies far beyond 2011.
Two South-Africans released by Somaliland (et)
Military Cargo, Plane and Russian Crew Still Held
Somaliland authorities searched a fortnight ago a Russian Antonov plane, which had arrived from Uganda and was destined for Puntland, finding 583kg of military style uniforms from Cape Town.
Since there is a UN embargo on taking military equipment to Somalia and this includes military uniforms, all eight passengers were detained in remand for further investigations.
After holding them for 10 days in detention at a hotel and after intense haggling behind the curtains involving the UN, other middlemen and the South African Government, the Somaliland authorities then decided to release the two South Africans Christopher Everson and Anton van der Merwe, who claimed they were journalists. The last word was that only the six Russians would face charges of importing non-lethal military contraband, which had first been delivered on board of an SAA plane to Entebbe in Uganda and was then loaded onto the Russian Antonov, which landed in Hargeisa in Somaliland instead of following the original plan top refuel in Addis and fly to Bosasso.
The South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation spokesperson Clayson Monyela confirmed the release of the two South African Nationals on Tuesday.
However, since their return to South Africa still serious questions concerning the "journalistic work" of the duo have arisen. It was said that they had been assigned by a South African company Moonlighting Films to the U.S.-American TV station SPA.
Asked by the Cape Times, Everson's wife Su denied the pair had been working for Moonlighting Films, but could not say who they had been working for. According to Reuters, Theresa Ryan van Graan, of Moonlighting Films, refused to comment about Everson and Van der Merwe and did not confirm whether they had been working for the company either.
In Puntland recently mercenary company Saracen International with offices in Uganda and South-Africa had started operating, which triggered an international uproar. Saracen is run by Lafras Luitingh, a former senior executive of the now-defunct South African mercenary company Executive Outcomes. The freed duo denied knowing any of this but also could not really say what they actually were supposed to "film".
The story behind the story has it that the Saracen Puntland operations are financed by U.S.-American money channeled through a not specified "Muslim country" and are executed with the support of high Ugandan officials.
Discussions among professional journalist organizations are circling around the question how to achieve that in furture genuine journalists will not be seen as spies or mercenaries. This questions already had risen when two French governmental agents assigned to conduct trainings for special units of the embattled TFG government in Mogadishu had registered themselves as journalists in the Hotel they were staying in. After weeks both were then abducted from that Hotel, one later escaped and one is said to be still held by a fundamentalist group in Southern Somalia.
'Black Water wants to go into Somalia'
Interview with Independent Journalist, Thomas Mountain (PressTV)
As tension in Somalia continues to escalate, the US banking institutions and corporations seem to reap the benefits by destroying any stability and sovereignty through creating conflicts.
Press TV interviews Thomas Mountain regarding the US support of conflicts in Africa and how the US is funding the Ethiopian President to invade Somalia. Press TV: Welcome to On the Edge coming from sunny downtown Tehran, Iran. Let's talk with Thomas C. Mountain. Thomas is an independent journalist living in Eritrea and writes often on the Horn of Africa. Thomas, welcome to the Edge.
Mountain: Thanks Max, it's nice to be back.
Keiser: Thomas C. Mountain, you are an expert on the Horn of Africa. So what are your thoughts on the recent WikiLeaks cable gate revelations that the US essentially hired Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi to invade Somalia in 2006.
Mountain: Well, I haven't really had a chance to review all 1300 some documents. But it's pretty much common knowledge that Meles was sent in. And I don't think he was too happy about it because in history no Ethiopian regime has ever picked a fight with the Somalis. There was a war between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977, but that was started by the Somalis so I don't think any Ethiopian President in his right mind would volunteer to start a war with Somalia. I think he was pretty much pressured by his masters who pay his salary and military budget in the United States.
Press TV: Right, well this is what we are seeing with these WikiLeaks revelations is the US just basically interfering all over the world extra legally with no due process, no consideration for the law, and no consideration for human rights or civil rights, and they are just making a mess wherever they go. The cables also show Black Water pitching in to get involved in Somalia. What's the empire's interest in Somalia? Do they have any oil?
Mountain: Well, yes there is suppose to be a lot of oil and gas. But I think it's more of a… just in general Americans' foreign policy particularly in regards to Africa, is what we call "crisis management." They want to instigate a crisis and then manage the crisis. Thus they can basically prevent in strong nationalist government from coming to power that would protect the people's interest and force the Western governments to pay a fair share in their natural resources. Basically they just want to be able to come in and pay off some war lords and rape and loot the resources of a country whenever possible. I think that is pretty much US policy in Somalia. They know that if a genuine nationalist government comes to power in Somalia, they are going to be pretty hostile to Western interests and especially the United States, because the US has committed a long list of very nasty crimes in Somalia. So they just want to see the war lords in power and when the Union of Islamic Courts came to power, it brought peace to Mogadishu for the first time and in 2006 Americans sent the Ethiopian gendarmes in to destroy that peace. So I don't think the US has any good intentions toward Somalia at all.
Press TV: Tell me something about Somalia. You can help me pick through this whether it's non-sense or not. I heard in Somalia Coca-Cola has these huge tankers parked outside that are filled with coke syrup. It's the largest distribution point for coke syrup and effectively coke syrup is the currency of Somalia. Is that crazy or somewhere near accurate?
Mountain: That's the first time I've heard of that. The Somali pirates have of coursed collected about 500 million dollars or more hijacking ships. There has been a lot of talk about them trying to defend their fishing rights and other things. But the bottom line is you have a lot of ships presently hijacked in Somalia, and the pirates there are basically working for the war lords. When the pirates capture a ship they have to pay off the local war lord, and they have to pay off the district war lord. They have to pay off the presidential war lord. They have to pay off the Ethiopian military and of course they have to pay off Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. In exchange for that they get protection. The Ethiopian regime is the US policeman. They pretty much told the United States and all the Western countries to lay off the Somalia pirates because they are paying protection money and that explains why there hasn't been a single cruise missile come whistling to the doors of any of these pirates' lairs after they have collected their loot. That is something nobody in the Western media wants to talk about. How come there has been zero retaliation against these pirates. The Americans have bombed…
Press TV: How much did you say? 500mn you say?
Mountain: Over 500mn yes.
Press TV: So essentially the American pirates, the Wall Street Banks are somehow involved in taking a cut of that and it's easy money for them. And of course you would never go in and disrupt easy money. There is stock exchange that has sprung up around the piracy that's going on. Real estate prices are exploding. So it's like the Hamptons. You've got the crooks and the pirates on Wall Street and the real estate market in the Hamptons goes up. Here in Somalia you have pirates out there 500mn or so looting and the real estate market around that area goes up. You've got the same crooks, the same financial terrorists, the overlords: J.P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Warren Buffett etc.. in their taking a cut. Now what is the mechanism for them to take the cut? I mean it's not the IMF. They are not the intermediary disruptive terrorist force. It's not the World Bank. What is the intermediary force that holds the bag; the bag man for the Wall Street Banks in Somalia?
Mountain: Well, the American foreign policy is based on using a local policeman. Most of the money ends up in Meles Zenawi's pocket. He has his warlords in Puntland where most of the pirates come from. Puntland is located right on the very tip of the horn of Africa. So there is a payoff that starts out with some desperados going off in small boats by snatching these ships and collecting cash. They land on the beach and often they head right for the nearest Ethiopian military base. They make their payoff and make sure that no one comes in and bombs them in their homes. So in any case Meles Zenawi is the bag man.
Press TV: Who is the banking facility here? Is it the Swiss Banks? I heard that have a huge money laundering operation in Tel Aviv now picking up the slack from Switzerland. Where is the main money laundering going on for this particular global scam?
Mountain: You know Ethiopia is in the center of a major aid-to-arms diversion scandal. It's something like 6 billion dollars a year according to the latest reports I've seen is funneled to the Meles Zenawi regime to keep him in power there and enforce the interest of the IMF and the World Bank in that part of the world. So I think it's pretty much they pay off Meles Zenawi, and then he does what they want him to like invade Somalia. Right now Meles Zenawi is carrying out genocide in the Ogaden and its escalating into a full blown genocide where he is rounding up tens of thousands of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopian Ogaden and putting them into basically starvation camps. The expression is if you can't catch the fish (meaning the Ogaden rebels) you drain the lake. That is what he's doing. He is accelerating the Ogaden genocide and the purpose of all that is to just basically keep Meles Zenawi in power. So he can protect imperial American interests in the Horn of Africa, which is one of the most strategic areas in the world. All the trade between Asia and Europe passes through the Horn of Africa every day. So the Americans have gotten Meles Zenawi there protecting the banks' interests, and protecting the financial terrorists, and he's the guy that has the huge bank accounts in London with hundreds of millions of dollars. This has been going on for decades now.
Press TV: So, Meles Zenawi is going through London not Switzerland and Tel Aviv. Six billion dollars a year in arms deals, as off course arms dealing are America's huge money laundering operation globally. That is a trillion dollars of tax money collected from those poor smocks in America every year that goes to the IRS and ends up in the Pentagon, and goes for buying guns for terrorists around the world like this fellow Meles Zenawi who is using billions of dollars in arms deals to launder the money he is stealing via the Somali pirates. I tell you he should just go public on the New York Stock Exchange and would get a better evaluation. He could be like the Google of piracy. He could be worth 200bn than just 20bn dollars. Anyway let's move on. Black Water now known as Z, let's talk about their involvement a little bit more. Are they visible? Do they wear big branded uniforms like Black Water Z mercenaries for hire or are they more underground?
Mountain: Well, I don't think even Black Water wants to go into Somalia. They have been using Ugandan proxies and other proxies in Mogadishu to try and pop up this puppet regime that they claim is the government of Somalia. What they have been doing, these that got the blessing of the United Nations under the African Union, is every time the gorilla fighters attack them successfully in frustration they fire artillery rounds into the surrounding civilian neighborhoods. Most people don't realize when you hear of death reports in Mogadishu almost all of that is caused by mortar and artillery rounds fired by the United Nation blessed African Union troops. So there's probably been tens of thousands of Somalia's killed by the United Nations and African Union troops in Somalia who they have the gall to call peace keepers.
Press TV: Alright, Thomas Mountain you live in Africa where missionaries and charities have operated for centuries as the unarmed wing of the empire. Tell us about the Human Rights mob. Who are they? What do they call themselves a mob?
Mountain: Well, I have labeled them the Human Rights mob because George Soros is the financial hit man. He has just given 1bn dollars over the next ten years in a matching grant to Human Rights Watch. Now this is a matching grant meaning through other foundations and trusts, which George Soros has laundered donations through the likes of human rights watch and Amnesty International for years now. He will give them another billion dollars. So Human Rights Watch is about to collect 2bn dollars in the next ten years from George the hit man Soros. Now what's Human Rights Watch going to do with this? George Soros got on national public radio in the United States and said we are going to expand Human Rights watch into the developing world. We are going to have offices of Human Rights Watch basically gathering intelligence and influencing American government policy in the developing world as much as possible towards policies that favor George Soros. Now why do we call George Soros the hit man?
Well, a good example was the Rose Revolution in Georgia when George Soros put over 42mn dollars in through his NGO funds into supporting the Saakashvili regime. Now 42mn dollars is almost ten dollars per person in Georgia. That would be like if in the United States George Soros spent 3bn dollars on the American election putting Barack Obama into power. And what did he do? As soon as Saakashvili came to power, he started arresting the opposition, starting torturing opposition members, and opposition members starting disappearing and on top of that Saakashvili had his military attack the South Ossetians who he claims are his own people opening artillery fire on civilian communities. What can of massacre would have happened if the Russians hadn't counter attacked and driven him out? All this was paid for by George Soros putting Saakashvili in power. This is blood money now. These NGOS that put Saakashvili into power with 42mn dollars have got blood stains on their hands. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International kept their mouths shut when all this happened. They are quick to jump out and condemn Eretria for alleged human rights abuses, which are pretty much non-existent. Yet they are very quiet when it comes to a program that George Soros is funding.
So I call them the Human Rights Mob. They are taken the hit man's money, and they are attacking countries like Eretria which are doing a lot of things to promote human rights like provide clean drinking water for the people, make sure everybody is fed and they have a roof over their head, and people have decent medical care. These are really the basic human rights. Not freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of elections, which is what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty claim so loudly about. You know the fact is the Human Rights movement has been bought off by a financial terrorist like George Soros to the tune of 2bn dollars. It's an incredible amount of money in ten years. What are they going to do with it? We know what they are going to do with it. They are going to go and be a front for Soros in the 3rd world and developing world.
Press TV: Thomas Mountain, did you read the alchemy of finance, George Soros' masterpiece where he explains reflexivity, which basically says if you manipulate the price of a market enough it will become the new normal, and then you can cash in on your manipulation, and so oh it was the market and not me.
Mountain: I'll have to read that Max. Thanks for the tip.
Press TV: Yes, it's a how to guide on how to manipulate markets. Just to be clear, the Human Rights Mob is a label you have given these groups. You are saying they are basically taking the money from Soros who has vested interest in manipulating these markets, and claiming to be somehow a man interested in furthering human rights when in fact he is only interested in furthering his network. He is not really doing well on either side as a hedge fund manager or as a human rights philanthropist….
Anyway, let's move on to another one of these global, globe-trotting good-doers that seems to do bad more than good such as Bill Gates, multi-billionaire, founder of Microsoft. You write, "Bill Gates, 10bn dollar vaccine scam." I take it you don't find his charitable work in Africa very charitable Thomas Mountain.
Mountain: I'll give you an example. I live in Eritrea, which has reduced malaria mortality in the last eight years by almost 85%. Malaria is the number one killer in Africa and this has been the biggest breakthrough in history in fighting malaria mortality. And it's not a medicine-based program, it's a public health-based program providing insect treated mosquito nets and making sure they get retreated, making sure that their clinics are within a couple of hours walk from all the villages in the malaria belt, and through this basic public health Eritrea has made the biggest breakthrough in malaria treatment in history.
Now, Bill Gates has turned around and donated, well it's actually a tax-write off; my sources say over a billion dollars to develop a "vaccine for malaria." People that know malaria know that it's a very resistant, very quickly developed resistance to drugs and that in five years after the latest vaccine comes out it won't work anymore, but by then its patent will have expired and Africa will have to buy a new vaccine. And every five years, a new vaccine and tens of billions of dollars of African blood money will get sucked out of Africa to pay for these latest vaccines and the fact is that Bill gates has got tens of billions of dollars invested in the major pharmaceutical companies. So this donation, which is actually a tax-write off, is going to end up bring back tens of billions of dollars, if Bill Gates has his way, back into the pockets of the major international pharmaceutical companies and it will pay off ten times or more on what Bill Gates has donated to this fight.
Now, the World Health Organization (WHO), which recently has been exposed for being a front for the major pharmaceuticals when it raised a big hysteria about the swine flu. For example, France had to destroy 350 million Euros of vaccine, which the WHO said they had to buy and what they've done basically is come in and suppress news about this big breakthrough in malaria mortality in Eritrea because it's public health based, not pharmaceutical-based.
So tens of millions of lives could be saved if the rest of Africa and the rest of the world will emulate and copy and use Eritrea's role model to prevent malaria deaths, instead they're suppressing knowledge of this.
Press TV: Well, Bill Gates is a twice convicted predatory monopolist in the area of intellectual property so it makes sense that his solution to a problem would be to increase and expand more intellectual property that comes under the rubric of those laws that is a known economic fallacy and drainer of economies not a value added to economies.
Let's move on to 'land grab' that is going on in many nations such as Saudi Arabia and China and many hedge funds including George Soros is buying lands in Africa - I take it this is just more of the same?
Mountain: Well there is some international companies and governments coming into Ethiopia and buying up some of the prime agricultural land. Of course, tens of millions of people in Ethiopia are literally starving or on the verge of starvation and yet some of the prime agricultural land is being sold or leased for 99 years to countries like Saudi Arabia, which exported something like 10,000 tons of rice from Ethiopia last year while millions of Ethiopians are literally starving to death.
Of course, several million of dollars of everyone of these deals gets put into Mili Sonali's London bank accounts, but that's a pretty good example of how when you get a gangster like Mili Sonali in power, he doesn't care what happened to his own people.
Press TV: Let's talk about China, is it a positive or a negative, their influence going on there?
Mountain: I think China overall has been quite positive. I'll give you an example in Sudan - Sudan is the largest and potentially richest country in Africa and the west, the US in particular, wants to see Sudan divided because law in Sudan is under the leadership of Bashir (President Omar al-Bashir) who they claim is a genocidal killer when the facts on the ground is that Darfur relief effort is one of the largest best run relief efforts in history and that without the support and leadership of Bashir, it would not have been successful. So actually there never was genocide in Sudan.
Press TV: There was never genocide in Sudan? Explain that to me a little more, this could be news to George Clooney and some celebrities in LA - What do you mean by that?
Mountain: I was one of the first westerners to write about the problems in Sudan in 2003. The problems in Darfur were mainly a civil war that took place in 2004 and some part of 2005 and maybe 30,000 people died. Now that 's a big tragedy, but the relief effort started then and international forces along with Sudan security forces came in and pretty much stopped all the violence by 2006; so maybe 30,000 people died in Sudan - that was way back in 2004/2005. And since then, the people of Darfur, the victims of this violence have been the recipients of one of the largest best run relief efforts in history. The UN people, the Aid people on the ground in Sudan will tell you that this very successful relief effort would not have been possible without the cooperation and support of president Bashir and his government. So there hasn't been genocide in Sudan, instead the genocide, which you Max were the first international news program to cover is the genocide in the Ogaden, which by the way Max puts you on the edge because the real genocide is being funded by the west in the Ogaden in Ethiopia. It never happened in Sudan that was all a big scam to brainwash everybody and say hey, we need to send troops in to protect the genocide victims, so the west can come in and take over the largest and potentially wealthiest country in Africa.
Press TV: Following up on this note that we broke the story on The Edge - Is there one thing that the mainstream media is not covering right now that we can break for our global audience today?
Mountain: Well I was just talking about this breakthrough in malaria and malaria mortality prevention in Eritrea - that's a big story, but the Ogaden genocide is starting to accelerate. When you broke the story earlier this year it was a low level genocide. Now it's accelerating with the development where they're starting to put together these starvation camps - rounding up the Ogaden people into these camps. They've kicked all the western aid agencies out of the Ogaden; Mili Sonali has, including Doctors without Borders and the Red Cross. And now they're rounding the people up and they're basically going to starve them to death in these camps and we're talking about 10, 12, 15 million potential victims and this is all being paid for by western tax dollars.
So I think this Ogden genocide is probably the biggest news story that's starting to accelerate and that the west is not talking about and it was first broken here on your program, Max.
THEY ARE THERE ALREADY - AND IT IS A FREE FOR ALL
What some authors seem not to have realized is that the mercenaries are already there !!!
Trying to hide behind newly created camouflage-firms of Xe! Services (Blackwater goons) that outfit and others are already in action.
Five naval vessels are associated with the most notorious clandestine outfit, and in addition one with a Greek firm and two with a British company, while Bancroft (a merchenary outfit covered as a tax-deductible NGO !!!) Saracen, ACE and others are playing the shooters on land.
Kenyan Police Says Tanzanian behind City Blast By Zheng (Xinhua)
Kenyan authorities confirmed on Tuesday a Tanzanian who was headed to the Ugandan capital Kampala on a terrorism mission was behind the grenade attack which ripped through a Kampala-bound bus, killing at least three people.
But police chief Mathew Iteere said Albert John Olando Mulando, the suspect who carried luggage that had the exploded Russian-made grenade was the only person who died in the Monday night blast. "Preliminary investigations have established that the devise that exploded was an F1 Russian made Grenade similar to the one that exploded in a police Landrover within Eastleigh on Dec. 3," Iteere told journalists in Nairobi.
The blast smashed the windows of the Kampala Coach vehicle, and left blood stains and scattered bags on the ground nearby. The blast occurred as passengers were lining up to board the bus.
Iteere said the device exploded before Mulando, who was the owner of the bag and who was to occupy seat no. F4, could undergo a mandatory security check in order to board the bus, which was parked on River Road.
The police chief said the suspect was carrying a luggage wrapped in a plastic bag and as he was about to be screened at the entrance of the bus, he reportedly became nervous and dropped it, causing an explosion. "After the investigations, we are over 90 percent sure that the man was transporting the grenade to Uganda. It is only that he became nervous and dropped it down during the security check before he could enter the bus," Iteere told journalists in Nairobi.
He said the man did not have any identification documents with him apart from a pass issued on Oct. 23 when he entered the country through Loitoktok. "He is a Tanzanian born in Mwanza, and he has been staying in the country since he was issued with the pass," Iteere said. "So far, what we can say is that the man was acting alone and he did not have accomplices. He had with him a small notebook which had some mobile phone contacts which we are trying to scrutinise," he added. "In the process the said passenger dropped the paper bag and immediately the explosion occurred. The explosion injured the said passenger, other passengers and passers by," he said.
During the confusion, the police chief said, some of the passengers who were lining up to undergo a security check were wounded as well as others who were already in the bus.
According to Iteere, initial investigations have established that Mulando was the only casualty from the incident which also saw 22 Kenyans, 5 Ugandans, 4 Sudanese, and 6 Burundians, a Tanzanian and unknown person injured in the incident. "I am urging all Kenyans to be on high alert and always be wary of suspicious characters around them. Any such incidents or suspicious characters should be reported to the police," Iteere warned.
The police chief said they had all the reasons to link it with the terror warning issued in Kampala, Uganda on Sunday.
He said they have not yet establish the motive behind the attack but linked it to Somalia militant group, Al-Shabaab which waging nearly daily attacks on the transitional government of Somalia. "We do not know the motive yet but we are linking it with the Al shabaab and the threats they have been issuing," he said "We would like to assure the public that we are working with stakeholders to make our entire traveling hubs safe this festive season. We wish to commend Kampala Coach Bus Company for the security measures they have put in place to complement our efforts, " Iteere said.
Ugandan authorities had earlier warned that Al-Qaeda-linked militants planned to attack during the festive period of December.
Ugandan police said threats reportedly came from Islamist groups including the Al-Shabaab and Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Muslim rebel group that claimed to fight for equal rights for Muslims in Uganda.
In the previous most deadly attacks, more than 200 people were killed in August 1998 when Al-Qaeda operatives bombarded American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Somalia's Al Shabab Islamist movement -- which controls most of the country's south and boasts of links to Al Qaeda -- claimed it carried out the deadly attacks in Kampala in July, which killed 76 people, including an American aid worker.
The Kampala attacks were the first attacks that the group has launched outside of the Horn of Africa nation which has been without effective central government for more than two decades.
Al-Shabab has in the past threatened to attack Kenya because of its support for Somalia's Western-backed government.
Despite running one of the most over-zealous counter-terrorism agencies in the Horn of Africa region, the Kenyan anti-terror agents have consistently arrested dozens of terror suspects but failed to secure a single conviction in a court of law on a terrorism charge.
Efforts to enact an anti-terrorism bill have failed to push through in Parliament as lobby groups ganged up with members of parliament to defeat a proposed law claiming it was inconsistent with the constitution forcing the government to withdraw it for re- drafting.
As a result of its failure to try terror suspects under the current laws, the authorities in Nairobi have resorted to rendition of terrorism suspects to countries where the government are under no particular pressure to produce the suspects in court and eventually freeing them.
Recent cases involving the Kenyan and Uganda authorities have highlighted the extent of this legal crisis.
N.B.: When does the world finally understand and realize that it is the "War on Terror" who brought terror to East Africa.
America's New Mercenaries by Tim Shorrock Info (*)
As American commanders met for the Afghanistan review, Obama is hiring military contractors at a rate that would make Bush blush. Tim Shorrock on the Blackwater heirs.
Top U.S. commanders are meeting this week to plan for the next phase of the Afghanistan war. In Iraq, meanwhile, gains are tentative and in danger of unraveling.
Both wars have been fought with the help of private military and intelligence contractors. But despite the troubles of Blackwater in particular – charges of corruption and killing of civilians—and continuing controversy over military outsourcing in general, private sector armies are as involved as ever.
Without much notice or debate, the Obama administration has greatly expanded the outsourcing of key parts of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency wars in the Middle East and Africa, and as a result, for its secretive air war and special operations missions around the world, the U.S. has become increasingly reliant on a new breed of specialized companies that are virtually unknown to the American public, yet carry out vital U.S. missions abroad.
Companies such as Blackbird Technologies, Glevum Associates, K2 Solutions, and others have won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military and intelligence contracts in recent years to provide technology, information on insurgents, Special Forces training, and personnel rescue. They win their work through the large, established prime contractors, but are tasked with missions only companies with specific skills and background in covert and counterinsurgency can accomplish.
Some observers fear that the widespread use of contractors for U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Horn of Africa could deepen the secrecy surrounding the American presence in those regions, making it harder for Congress to provide proper oversight.
Even in Iraq, where the U.S. has ended combat operations, the government is "greatly expanding" its use of private security companies, creating "an entirely new role for contractors on the battlefield," Michael Thibault, the co-chairman of the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting, recently warned Congress.
Among the companies getting contracts is Blackbird, which is staffed by former CIA operatives, and is a key contractor in a highly classified program that sends secret teams into enemy territory to rescue downed or captured U.S. soldiers.
Glevum, meanwhile, fields a small army of analysts in Iraq and Afghanistan who provide the U.S. military with what the company opaquely describes as "information operations and influence activities."
And K2 is a highly sought-after subcontractor and trainer for the most secretive units of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, including the SEAL team that rescued the crew of the Maersk Alabama from a gang of pirates last year. It is based near the Army's Special Forces headquarters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was founded by Lane Kjellsen, a former Special Forces soldier.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander of conventional and special forces in the war zones, is using contractors because "he wants an organization that reports directly to him," said a former top aide to the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, the umbrella organization for all Special Forces.
"Everyone knows Petraeus can't execute his strategy without the private sector."
The former aide spoke on the condition that he not be identified, saying his career could be jeopardized if he went public. The International Security Assistance Force, the general's home command, did not respond to a request for comment.
The use of contractors could become a serious problem if controversies about them are not addressed, a senior British official warned during a recent visit to Washington. Pauline Neville-Jones, the U.K.'s minister of state for security and counterterrorism (and a former executive with QinetiQ PLC, a major intelligence contractor), told an audience at the Brookings Institution that "we have something of a crisis in Afghanistan" partly because of the "largely unregulated private sector security companies performing important roles" there.
The Pentagon's Central Command had nearly 225,000 contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas at last count, doing tasks ranging from providing security to base support. Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency field thousands more under classified contracts that are not publicly disclosed, but extend into every U.S. military command around the world. (According to reports in The Nation and elsewhere, Blackwater, which is now known as Xe, has contracted to send personnel into Pakistan to fight with the Joint Special Operations Command, although a command spokesman said the reports were "totally wrong.")
In response to a question from The Daily Beast, Neville-Jones said that American and British forces must work out "the operational rules and roles that they have when they are in the frontline." Unless that happens, "We are in danger of getting up against Geneva Convention problems and failure to observe fundamental rules of war."
A spokesman for SOCOM would not say exactly how many people work on its contracts, but did say that between 2001 and 2009, SOCOM's budget has grown from about $3 billion to about $10 billion. Neither SOCOM nor Special Operations forces outsource combat operations, the spokesman said. "About the only contractors Special Operations forces might have with them on operations are interpreters," he said.
However, private contractors are now fulfilling vital functions previously done by the military itself.
Blackbird is a case in point. Based in Herndon, Virginia, a stone's throw from the CIA, Blackbird deploys dozens of former CIA operatives and provides "technology solutions" to military and intelligence agencies. Much of the company's revenue—including a $450 million contract awarded last year by the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command—comes from the deployment of special teams and equipment into enemy territory to rescue American soldiers who have been captured by Taliban or al Qaeda units or have stranded after losing their helicopters in battle.
Until recently, the task of rescuing American soldiers was largely carried out by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recommended that the agency's parent command in Virginia be closed. If the recovery agency is shut down, Blackbird would likely pick up the rescue business as it is outsourced. In that case, recovery of captured or stranded American soldiers "won't be a military command anymore; it will be a business," said the former Special Operations command aide (an agency spokesman said, "It's too early to say what will happen.")
Blackbird is run by CEO Peggy Styer, an investor once labeled a "serial defense entrepreneur" by CNN. Last year, she hired Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, to a senior position. (Black hired and managed some of the first private operatives to enter Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, and later joined Blackwater.) Perhaps anticipating a pickup in future business, a venture-capital fund launched by Styer and two other Blackbird founders recently raised $21 million on Wall Street. Blackbird did not return phone calls or emails.
Glevum Associates, for its part, has won contracts for controversial intelligence-gathering work.
The Boston-based company was founded in 2006 by Andrew Garfield, a former British intelligence officer with counterinsurgency experience in Northern Ireland. Garfield first gained public notice in 2004, when he was a key player in the Lincoln Group, a defense contractor that became notorious for engaging in a covert psychological operation to plant stories in the Iraqi press that put a positive spin on America and the U.S. war effort in Iraq. (Covert psychological operations are known in the trade as psy-ops.)
Garfield won his first contracts for Glevum as an adviser to the U.S. military in Iraq. Drawing on his experience in Northern Ireland, his company began researching the views of Iraqi citizens toward the U.S. military. At the time, "no one was doing systematic target audience research," he told me in an interview.
Glevum's contribution to counterinsurgency efforts is a trademarked program called "Face-to-face Research Analysis" that combines intelligence collection with polls and interviews, primarily for the Army's Human Terrain System—a system that some American social scientists have described as unethical because information gleaned from anthropological researchers ultimately can be used to kill people.
Garfield denies the charge. The U.S. military, he told me, can't "connect opinions to location." Rather, the military uses his information "to focus their operations the right way and to provide solutions that Afghans would choose." Several experts on the program said it's impossible to divorce it from other—bloodier—counterinsurgency efforts. "HTS has been an intelligence-funded program from the beginning," said John Stanton, a Virginia military analyst who has written extensively about the system.
(Glevum's corporate partners include primary contractors BAE Systems and ManTech International. K2, which declined to comment, also wins much of its classified work as a subcontractor for larger companies such as Boeing and CACI.)
Garfield pushes back against the notion that Glevum Associates bears any resemblance to Blackwater, which became synonymous with corruption and incompetence for a series of incidents that included shooting innocent civilians and smuggling illegal weapons. "Whenever people think of contractors now, they think of Blackwater," said Garfield. "Well, if you hire a cheap plumber, don't be surprised when the plumbing breaks."
(*) Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based investigative journalist and the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Salon, Mother Jones, The Nation and many other publications at home and abroad. He can be reached through his website at timshorrock.com.
Read all COMMENTS
We shall no longer allow the Chinese or U.S. or any other PIRACY OF FREEDOMS:
While US prosecutors are eager to build a conspiracy case against Assange, the US-American justice department has still not approached the British government officially. US officials regard European human rights standards as an "irritant", secret cables show, and have strongly objected to the safeguards which could protect WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from extradition.
The editor-in-chiel of WikiLeaks is still held under injust bail conditions with a huge cash deposit of £200,000, a further £40,000 guaranteed by two sureties of £20,000 and severe restrictions on his movement, a curfew and the wearing of an Orwellian locator - an electronic tag recording and transmitting every move. Obviously in Britain one can get away with murder like the assasins of Alexander V. Litvinenkoor and with fraud as in the case of corrupting British weapons-manufacturerer and -dealer BAE, but not with revealing the truth.
John Pilger: Thus, we pledge to not simply bear witness but to actively participate in this fight – for freedom of speech, for real democracy and for justice.
That the manoeuvre is all about holding Julian Assange trapped to allow the U.S. of America to prepare extradition claims and another set of trumped up charges is obvious and the true character of the Swedish authorities, long kept under seal but lamented by many, comes into the open. Charging Julian Assange in the U.S. is most likely unconstitutional. The due process clause rules out prosecuting WikiLeaks' founder – a non-US citizen – for extraterritorial offences. The resurrection of the US Espionage Act of 1917 as a tool for prosecuting WikiLeaks and suppressing dissent would doom the United States of America. The announcement last week that the US is to host next year's UNESCO World Press Freedom Day event, which champions in particular "the free flow of information in this digital age", seems to become a farce. But maybe the U.S. of America has declined already to a third world country level, where such conferences are regularly held to improve the situation in such backward corners.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, says he is not obliged to return to be questioned over those allegations in Sweden and stated: "The law says that I also have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way." Assange said he had waited in Sweden for five weeks to be interviewed by police – "so I can put my side of the case forward" – but the interview did not happen. He added that before he left he had been told there was no reason for him to remain in Sweden. Asked by the BBC's John Humphrys why he would not return to Sweden to deal with the allegations, Assange said: "If they want to charge me, they can charge me. They have decided not to charge me." But he also revealed according to media reports: "They have asked, as part of their application, that if I go to Sweden and am arrested, I am to be held incommunicado. They have asked that my Swedish lawyer be gagged from talking to the public."
Sweden's authorities must now be forced to come immediately clean and no longer allow people to wash their dirty laundry in public !!! Why is Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Nye, freshly put on the case and apparently a specialist concerning the alleged sexual misconduct, not just quickly travelling to Britain and clearing up matters ? It is believed that then the Swedish prosecution would have to close the case, the British in turn would have to take off the electronic tag and pay back the bail-money and could no longer put Assange on a rendition flight and into the hands of their cousins in the lands of occupied North-America, where potential assassins like Robert (Dick sic!) Cheney, self-styled "terrorist"-hunter Joe Biden and conservative tea-party-swinger Sarah Palin are waiting to subject Julian Assange to a Western-style kangaroo-court of their making.
Meanwhile Federal Police in Australia have concluded already that WikiLeaks and it's Australian-born founder Julian Assange have not broken any laws in his home country - as the Australian Prime Minister announced last Friday.
DEFEND JULIAN ASSANGE! https://donations.datacell.com/ - earmark for Julian Assange Defence Fund.
For the terms of the fund please visit http://www.fsilaw.com/
Russia has suggested that Julian Assange should be awarded the Nobel peace prize, in an unexpected show of support from Moscow for the WikiLeaks founder.
STOP TORTURING U.S. Army Private BRADLEY MANNING !
Please contribute to the Bradley Manning's Defence Fund. His health is seriously deteriorating. Contact: jeff[at]bradleymanning.org
SUPPORT WIKILEAKS! https://donations.datacell.com/
A global ZDNet poll tracking the Wikileaks aftermath noted that only the U.S. audience is conflicted about Wikileaks. Across the globe, however, Wikileaks support abound by a sizeable majority. Generally speaking, Wikileaks enjoys wide support everywhere except in the U.S. and their new vasal Japan. But still in the U.S., 51 percent said they supported Wikileaks publishing confidential documents. In Japan, that percentage was 59.8 percent. From there the support picked up. In Germany, 88.6 percent of ZDNet readers support Wikileaks' effort. In Australia, 83.9 percent supported publishing confidential documents. China, France and the U.K. all checked in with support above 70 percent.
FIND WikiLEAKS: The orginal WikiLeaks domain is resolving again, but www.wikileaks.org redirects to a mirror on www.wikileaks.info, which has also other leaks plus the cablegates section, which is centred at www.wikileaks.ch -
see: http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html (over 1426 up-to-date sites of 2194 websites now mirror WL)
THE GUARDIAN LIVE WIKILEAKS CABLES UPDATES - Leak-Stories getting stronger and stronger.
New York Times WIKILEAKS CABLES UPDATES - getting weaker and weaker.
.... and also check the Dissident Voices
BOYCOTT ANYTHING SWEDISH or U.S.-AMERICAN or UK or CHINESE (really do it - it is actually fun to cut out that crap) - as well as AMAZON, PAYPAL, eBAY, MasterCard, VISA, BANK OF AMERICA, Lloyds Banking Group, MAQS.com, Tableau Software, EveryDNS and the Swiss Banks POST FINANCE and JULIUS BAER !!!
JUST WALK AWAY FROM THEM FOR NOW, FROM THEIR PRODUCTS, FROM THEIR SCAMS !
- and see what EEF has to say on constructive direct action !
UPDATES: http://anonops.blogspot.com/ and http://twitter.com/AnonOps and ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE
Operation Payback ServerLess Project
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep did fall on you.
Ye are many – they are few.
Exposing the Lies:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Forcing Governments to Confess By James Bamford (*) (NYT)
Early on the morning of Dec. 17, 2009, a U.S. Navy warship launched a deadly cluster bomb attack on a small village in Southern Yemen killing 21 children and 20 innocent women and men, all from two families.
Dozens more were seriously injured. Another attack took place on Christmas Eve. Although the targets were senior Al Qaeda members, the missiles were far off target. Then, to hide U.S. involvement from the American public, and the Yemeni public, the Obama administration agreed to an elaborate series of deceptions with Yemeni President Saleh. They included a well-publicized "congratulations" call to Saleh from President Obama and a promise by Saleh that "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," all of which was recently exposed by WikiLeaks.
Deception begets deception. When a president launches a secret war, killing innocent civilians, in a country far away from any battlefield, and then attempts to cover it up, he is courting disaster. Such deceptions may be used as justifications by others to strike back, as may have been the case with U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, who has been charged with disclosing diplomatic cables that ended up on WikiLeaks.
A generation ago, government employees with Communist sympathies worried security officials. Today, after years of torture reports, black sites, Abu Ghraib, and a war founded on deception, it is the possibility that more employees might act out from a sense of moral outrage that concerns officials.
There may be more employees out there willing to leak, they fear, and how do you weed them out? Spies at least had the courtesy to keep the secrets to themselves, rather than distribute them to the world's media giants. In a sense, WikiLeaks is forcing the U.S. government into the confessional, with the door wide open. And confession, though difficult and embarrassing, can sometimes cleanse the soul.
(*) James Bamford is a writer and documentary producer specializing in intelligence and national security issues. His most recent book, his third on the National Security Agency, is "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret N.S.A.: From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America."
"Mafia delegate's Japanese dolphin captivity" – To ransom a dolphin failed
Press release by ProWal and WDSF
(Taiji/Radolfzell/Hagen – Dec.21, 2010) Japanese fishermen are slaughtering about 20.000 dolphins and small cetaceans in coastal water of Japan every year. In Taiji alone, approximately 2300 of the intelligent marine mammals are victims of the bloody massacre. Andreas Morlok, who is the manager of the marine protection organization ProWal (For the whales) and a member of the board of trustees of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Forum (WDSF) returned from Taiji a few days ago. He offered a fisherman 100,000 yen (1,300 US $) to safe and protect the life of a dolphin - without success.
Twelve boats surround the dolphins in a hidden bay in Taiji during the dolphin drives from March to September every year. There they stab whole pods of dolphins - even those with little babies - or drown them cruelly. The fishermen get about 450 € and the dolphin meat ends up in many Japanese restaurants and supermarkets of the whole country.
Morlok was shocked about the brutality of those dolphin fishermen: "The escape of the intelligent animals is prevented by closing off the route to the open ocean with barricades of fishing nets. From the fishing boats, the dolphin trainers are looking for the most beautiful female pups. `Thumbs up´ is the fisher men sign, for a dolphin's lifelong captivity in a dreary dolphinarium. Meanwhile the butchers with knives and hooks are already waiting for the rest. They also slaughter dolphin babies who are crying for their mothers. Each of my steps was been spotted by the police, the Mafia and fishermen. Since I saw this shocking image's I can't sleep well and I hope every day for bad weather in Taiji, because then the dolphin drive boats stay in port", says Andreas Morlok.
The animal welfare activist was shocked. After the images of the brutal drive hunts on TV and the Internet, he was prepared for the worst. But he describes the reality on sight as being much more terrible: "to witness the dolphin drives, the selection of the dolphins for aquariums and the slaughter of the remaining family members, was worst than anything I ever had to bear in my life. Those are unimaginable situations. You can not intervene and help. Everybody who is psychologically not fairly stable can be destroyed by such experiences."
The dolphin defender could not prevent the dolphin slaughter, because otherwise he would have ended in jail. "The captured animals are guarded by the Mafia," Morlok says. After all, a dolphin who is trained for the dolphin show, can achieve a price of up to 150,000 dollars. "Even the presence of the police did not protect me against verbal death threats of the Mafia, "Morlok states.
He offered the fishermen 1,000 € to spare the life of a dolphin, but they refused. The authorities there are the masterminds of various Mafia clans'. They decide what happens, hide behind the scenes close to the Taiji Whale Museum at regular auctions, they decide which show dolphins will be exported and what price they will fetch. The Japanese authorities unconditionally certify the documents for the exports. They freely give the necessary CITES documents which are required for the trade according to the Endangered Species Act. A certification of an adequate accommodation in a dolphinarium of the importer is sufficient to issue the export licence. Some of the dolphins arrived in a dolphinarium at the Turkish Riviera. As a result of the intense pressure from WDSF and ProWal, German tour operators at least have agreed, to take their trips to that dolphinarium out of their programs.
But obviously, there are still enough dolphin shows persisting around the world, importing and holding captive dolphins, because the breeding in captivity is not sustainable. If the visitors knew about the cruel backgrounds, they would reconsider, if they ever wish to visit a Dolphinarium again. This is also the hope of the activists of ProWal and the WDSF. Nevertheless, the slaughter would probably not stop, says Andreas Morlok, because the dolphin meat in Japan would still be offered for consumption.
In cooperation with the newly created foundation SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund, which mainly supported the present actions in Japan financially, the organizations want to motivate Japanese companies to distance themselves from the dolphin and whale hunting in their homeland. Lars Gorschlüter, chairman of the SAVE Foundation says: "The global public protests are getting louder and louder, but we are only successful, when we abolish this brutal killings."
WDSF CEO Jürgen Ortmüller says: "The dangerous search by Andreas Morlok for ProWal and WDSF reveals now many more details about the Japanese dolphin hunts, which we were never aware of. We have now extensive film and photo material and with this we will also report about previously unknown dolphin training camps, far away from Taiji. Also documented was a special 'get-together´ between dolphins and dolphin defenders in the Taijis Whale Museum. "—
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SOMALI WATERWORLD
THE SITUATION ON SOMALIA's 6th ESTATE:
- YOU ARE PERSISTENTLY BEING LIED TO WITH IMPUNITY
- TRENDS
- SOLUTIONS PENDING
- ECOTERRA STATEMENT and
- THE WISH-LISTS FOR THE NAVIES, THE UN AND BAN KI-MOON
READ ALL AND UNDERSTAND AT: http://beforeitsnews.com/story/135118
HOSTAGE CASES UNDER OBSERVATION:
Genuine members of families of the abducted seafarers can call +254-719-603-176 for further details or send an e-mail in any language to office[AT]ecoterra-international.org
MV SOCOTRA 1 : Seized December 25. 2009. The vessel carrying a food cargo for a Yemeni businessman and bound for Socotra Archipelago was captured in the Gulf of Aden after it left Alshahir port in the eastern province of Hadramout. 6 crew members of Yemeni nationality were aboard. Latest information said the ship was commandeered onto the high seas between Oman and Pakistan, possibly in another piracy or smuggling mission. 2 of the original crew are reportedly on land in Puntland. VESSEL STILL MISSING and/or working as pirate ship, was confirmed by Yemeni authorities.
FV AL-SHURA (AL-SHUVAL?) : Seized after February 20, 2010 and most likely on 25th February with one of 9 the Yemeni sailors being killed by the Somali pirate-attackers. Allegedly the pirates now left the vessel and the dhow was returned to her owner, but independent confirmation is still awaited from Yemen. A similar dhow named AL-SHUVAL was said to have be moored off Garacad at the North-Eastern Indian ocean coast off Somalia until recently and was observed at Dhanaane and then moved away. The vessel is now missing and as such confirmed by Yemeni authorities.
MV ICEBERG I : Seized March 29, 2010. The UAE-owned, Panama-flagged Ro-Ro vessel MV ICEBERG 1 (IMO 7429102) with her originally 24 multinational crew members (9 Yemenis, 6 Indians, 4 from Ghana, 2 Sudanese, 2 Pakistani and 1 Filipino) was sea-jacked just 10nm outside Aden Port, Gulf of Aden. The 3,960 dwt vessel was mostly held off Kulub at the North-Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia. Since negotiations had not yet achieved any solution, the vessel was taken to the high seas again. Then the USS McFaul intercepted and identified the ship on 19th May 2010, despite the pirates having painted over her name and re-named the ship SEA EXPRESS, while the vessel was on a presumed piracy mission on the high-seas. Since about 50 pirates on the ship made any rescue operation impossible without endangering the 24 crew, the naval ship followed the commandeered vessel's movements for the next 36 hours, until it began to sail back towards the coast of Somalia. Already back then it had transpired that the shipping company Azal Shipping based in Dubai refused to pay any ransom and the ship is apparently not insured, though it carries quiet valuable cargo. It seems that the British cargo owner is influencing the not forthcoming negotiations. The sailors soon had no more food, water or medicine from their stores on board. Chief Officer Kumar, Chief Engineer Mohamed and Second Engineer Francis also stated since months that they urgently need Diesel for the electricity generators. The crew requested in July and August again humanitarian intervention as before but could only receive some supplies through intervention by local elders and a humanitarian group, because the owner-manager neglects the crew . In September the some negotiations for the release started again, but have not been concluded, because the captors consider the offer of the shipowner as unrealistic. According to the Chinese state-media newswire XINHUA, the acting director at the ministry of foreign affairs in Accra (Ghana) Mr. Lawrence Sotah said the ministry, in response to a petition by a relative of one of the hostages, had commenced investigations, but reportedly stated also that their location and reasons for the kidnapping remained unknown. "We do not have any information as to what the pirates are demanding, because the owners of the ship or the pirates themselves have not put out any information which will be helpful for us to know exactly what they want," he said. "Ghana's mission in Saudi Arabia has been contacted to assist, " Sotah said. He said the ministry was working with other international security organization to get to the bottom of what he termed the "alleged" kidnapping.
The vessel is owned by a company called ICEBERG INTERNATIONAL LTD, but registered only with "care of" the ISM-manager AZAL SHIPPING & CARGO (L.L.C) - Shipping Lines Agents - Dubai UAE, whose representative is saying that he is handling the case.
Though EU NAVFOR spokesman Cmdr. John Harbour had stated that the vessel was carrying just "general mechanical equipment" and was heading for the United Arab Emirates when it was attacked, it carries according to the owner-manager generators, transformers and empty fuel tanks. It could now be confirmed that besides other cargo it carries generators and transformers for British power rental company Aggreko International Power Projects and the cargo seems to be better insured than the vessel.
One of the sailors from Ghana was able to speak to a journalist back home and stated on 22. September: "They have given us a 48 hour deadline that if we don't come up with anything reasonable they will kill some of us and sink the vessel. I am appealing to the Ghanaian authority that they should do something to save our lives because our treatment here is inhuman". The vessel is now very close to the shore of Garacad. In the beginning of October the Somali pirates allegedly threatened to kill the sailors and to sell the body organs of the 22 hostages, if their ransom demands are not met in the near future. Media reports said the information was received via a text message from one of the hostages, but investigations showed that the message, which read that the pirates will kill them and then remove their eyes and kidneys in order to be sold, is more a sort of a macabre hoax. On 27. October the third officer (name of the Yemeni man known but withheld until next of kin would speak out) died. The crew reported the case, evidence was provided and the owner confirmed that he also knows. Since there is no more light diesel to run the generators for the freezer, the owner reportedly just gave instructions to take the body off the vessel, but has made no arrangements to bring it back to Yemen.
Thereafter it was said that the group holding the ship would use it again to capture other vessels when two skiffs were taken taken on board hinting at plans that the gang intended to commandeer the ship to the high-seas again. But vessel and crew were then still held at Kulub near Garacad at the North-Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia, because it is believed the vessel is out of fuel.
The families of the Indian seafarers on board have several times called upon the President and the Prime Minister of India and addressed the Indian Minister to help and solve the crisis, since the shipowner is not even responding to their requests for information. Though Dubai's Azal Shipping, fronting for the real owners, stated to a maritime website that the crew would not be malnourished, the governments of the seafarers already have statements from the captain and crew-members themselves, which state otherwise and also describe the appalling medical situation.
Again an urgent request to deliver relief-supplies in form of food, water and urgently required medicine as well as fuel for the generators has been made by the captain and crew, but was so far neglected by the ship-owner, who also has not yet facilitated the transfer of the body of the deceased to his Yemeni family. A great number of the still surviving 23 crew are suffering now from serious medical conditions of various kind , ranging from blindness, infections to mental illness, and most suffer from skin rashes, which make now humanitarian intervention and medical assistance compulsory.
It is hoped that the Indian Prime Minister, who was in the UAE, can achieve that the owners of the vessel are now really engaging in a tangible process to free the vessel and not just rely on their so-called consultants.
Latest reports state that the vessel is now only one mile off the beach off Kulub. Dangers that it might get wrecked on the beach are real, because the chief engineer alerted that there is no more fuel on board to manoeuvre the vessel away from the shore and heavy winds and waves push the vessel closer to land.
It would not be the first time that unscrupulous vessel or cargo owners even hope to cash in on the insurance money for a wrecked ship and lost cargo in such a case.
Since 02. February 2005 the classification society Bureau Veritas had withdrawn from this vessel, because a survey of the ship was already overdue back then and no survey has been carried out since. But this did not stop disputed outfits like the Canadian company Africa Oil to use the ICEBERG I as their supply vessel for their adventures with the Australian oil-juggler Range Resources and the Puntland regional administration and to take equipment back to Djibouti when their deal finally went sour recently.
The vessel is also not covered by an ITF Agreement and the crew will have serious difficulties to get their rights even once they come free.
Already the family of the deceased Yemeni seafarer and their lawyer from Aden had no success to achieve any co-operation from the vessel owner or their front-men - a situation experienced by several organizations already before.
Now the flag-state Panama and the governments of the seafarers have been addressed and are requested to step in.
FV JIH-CHUN TSAI 68 (aka JIN CHUN TSAI NO 68) (日春財68號) : Seized March 30, 2010. The Taiwan-flagged and -owned fishing vessel with factory facility was attacked together with sister-ship Jui Man Fa (瑞滿發), which managed to escape. The vessels are operating out of the Seychelles and reportedly had been observed in Somali waters earlier. The crew of Jih-chun Tsai No. 68 consists of 14 sailors - a Taiwanese captain along with two Chinese and 11 Indonesian seamen. The vessel was mostly held at Kulub at the North-Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia and at first negotiations faced serious communication problems, while later allegedly a conclusion was achieved. But the release could still not be effected, since the brokers as well as the pirate-group holding the vessel changed. Allegedly money was sent into the wrong hands and never reached those holding the vessel and the seafarers hostage. It was reported in the meantime that the Taiwanese captain had several times been beaten severely. However, a release of vessel and crew from Kulub seemed to be near and the vessel left the coast at the end of November, but is said now to NOT have been released and instead is used for another piracy operation.
MV RAK AFRIKANA : Seized April 11, 2010. The general cargo vessel RAK AFRICANA (IMO 8200553) with a dead-weight of 7,561 tonnes (5992t gross) was captured at 06h32 approximately 280 nautical miles west of Seychelles and 480nm off Somalia in position 04:45S - 051:00E. The captured vessel flies a flag of convenience from St. Vincent and the Grenadines and has as registered owner RAK AFRICANA SHIPPING LTD based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and an office in the Seychelles, while industry sources said the beneficial owner was from China. AL SINDBAD SHIPPING & MARINE from Ras al Khaimah (UAE) serves as manager. While China's Seafarers Union, based on an outdated ITF database, first spoke of 23 Chinese nationals as crew, the shipowner says there are 26 seamen from India, Pakistan and Tanzania on board. The actual crew-list has not been provided yet and the crew is not covered by an ITF agreement, but it could be established that the 26 member crew comprises of 11 Indians, including the captain, the second and third officer, as well as 10 Tanzanians and 5 Pakistanis. The vessel stopped briefly due to engine problems - around 280 nautical miles (520 kilometres) west of the Seychelles - but was then commandeered to Somalia and was held off Ceel Huur not far from Harardheere at the Central Somali Indian Ocean Coast, from where it was moved to Ga'an and further towards Hobyo, but then it was still held in the vicinity of Harardheere. When the pirates tried to leave the coast last time from that location they were pushed back by the navies to the shore and the vessel is now held near Xamdule (Hamdule is between Hobyo and Harardheere). The captors have forced the crew to fly the Italian flag, signalling an apparent beneficial owner of the vessel. Meanwhile negotiations had reportedly broken down - because the interpreter was confused by not knowing if he was talking to the right people - but seem now to have started again.
THAI FISHING FLEET : Seized April 18, 2010 with a total crew of 77 sailors, of which 12 are Thai and the others of different nationalities, the Thailand-flagged vessels operating out of Djibouti were fishing illegal in the Indian Ocean off Minicoy Island in the fishing grounds of the Maldives. All three vessels were then commandeered towards the Somali coast by a group of in total around 15 Somalis. Already there are reports of three dead sailors with these vessels.
FV PRANTALAY 11 with a crew of 26
FV PRANTALAY 12 with a crew of 25
FV PRANTALAY 14 with a crew of 26
None of these vessels is registered and authorized by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission to fish in the Indian Ocean.
The fleet was mostly held off the coast at Kulub near Garacad (06 59N 049 24E) at the north-eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia. The captors already threatened since months to use one of the hunter-vessels of the group as a piracy-launch, while negotiations have not been forthcoming. Prantalay 14 left the coast in the morning of 20. September to what is said to be another piracy expedition. Three skiffs, three ladders and other equipment were observed to be on board. The vessel has been further observed on 28. September near the shipping lanes in the area. On 30. September at 10h15 UTC a Pirate Action Group consisting of one skiffs with ladders and weapons was reported in position 07 34 N 057 39 E, which is assessed to be connected to an operation of this fishing vessel as Mother Ship - reported in position 06 47 N 060 51 E. A regional minister from Puntland got into problems when final negotiations for the release of the held vessels were supposed to take place at Garacad, but went sour. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva wants the navy to extend its anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia for another month. He will seek cabinet approval for an additional budget of about 100 million baht for this purpose, navy chief Admiral Kamthorn Phumhiran said earlier. Adm Kamthorn said Mr Abhisit wants the mission of The Royal Thai Navy Counter Piracy Task Unit of two navy ships with 351 sailors and 20 special warfare troops on board, which had left Thailand on Sept 10 and is now operating in the Gulf of Aden, extended. The mission was originally set for 98 days, ending on Dec 12., but the usual fishing season goes beyond that time, which is believed to be behind the extension demands. Now also FV PRANTALAY 11 left on another hunting mission for piracy prey, because the Thais have not at all even tried to wrench the ships from the fists of their captors. Only PRANTALAY 12 and her crew was then left as a super-hostage at the coast until on 16th November also FV PRANTALAY 12 sailed again to the oceans. All 3 vessels are believed in the moment to hunt for larger prey, since the shipowner PT Interfisheries didn't secure their release.
FV PRANTALAY 14 returned in the meantime after having been used to capture another merchant vessel and is now held off Hobyo at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast.
FV TAI YUAN 227 : Seized on May 06, 2010 in an area north of the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Seychelles as it headed for the Maldives. The Taiwanese fishing boat has a crew of 28 (9 Chinese, 3 Vietnamese, 3 Filipinos, 7 Kenyans and 2 from Mozambique). Taiwan's foreign ministry confirmed that the vessel had been seized after the Taipei Rescue Command Centre reported the incident to have taken place in approximate position 0105N-06750E. The ministry added that contact was made on Friday that week with the pirates who made an unspecified ransom demand, while the vessel is heading towards the Somali coast. The vessel has no authorization by the Indian Ocean Commission to fish in the Indian Ocean, which, however, is partly explained by the fact that China is opposed to Taiwan as flag state. Due to the inaction of the ship-owner and the Taiwan government to free the vessel, it was used again as launch for further piracy attacks. Vessel and crew was held off Habo at the Puntland coast of the Gulf of Aden, but now the Taiwanese fishing vessel is said by the NATO Shipping Centre (NSC) to be operating as pirate mother-ship within an area of a 200nm radius from 06 degrees 50 minutes north and 65 degrees 00 minutes east. NSC 'Counter Piracy Operation Ocean Shield' warns Masters . The vessel has even the potential to conduct pirate operations further out. The Tai Yuan 227 is a white hulled fishing vessel, approximately 50 metres long, with the registration numbers BH3Z87 painted in large black letters on the hull. NATO sounded a warning when at 21h00 UTC (18h00 local time) on October 19, 2010, the commandeered FV Tai Yuan 227 was sighted in position Latitude: 11°00N Longitude: 61°00E.
FV AL-DHAFIR : Seized on May 06 or 07, 2010 off the coast of Yemen. The Yemen coastguard of the Arabian peninsular state reported the case. Yemen's Defence Ministry confirmed that the 7 Yemeni nationals on board were abducted to Somalia. Yemen's coastguard said Somali pirates captured the fishing vessel, while it was docked at a Yemeni island in the Red Sea and had taken it to Somalia. The coastguard was continuing its efforts to retrieve the boat, the Defence Ministry said, but meanwhile the dhow is said to be held at the Somali shore close to Kulub.
MSV SHUVAL : Seized May 08, 2010. No further information has been retrieved about the fate of this Yemen-flagged vessel. Vessel considered missing. Yemeni authorities are further investigating.
MT MARIDA MARGUERITE : Seized May 08, 2010. The vessel and crew were captured around120nm south of the Omani port of Salalah in the protected shipping corridor. The German owner-managed, US-owner-registered chemical tanker of 13.273 dwt MARIDA MAGUERITE (IMO 9445655) has a crew of 22 seamen, including 19 Indians, two Bangladeshi and one Ukrainian. The vessel is flying a flag of convenience (FOC) from the Marshall Islands and is owned by W-O Shipping Group B.V. The tanker was held at the north-eastern Somali Indian Ocean coast near Garacad but then changed position to a location off the Gulf of Aden Coast near Habo. The vessel was mid August commandeered southwards to Hobyo in a possible move to provide cover for the release of the Korean supertanker held there, but has been commandeered back northwards too, when the oil-tanker left from Hobyo. Vessel and crew are said to be held now near Dinowda Quorioweyn close to the MV Suez. Negotiations are said to have come to a conclusion and a near release seems still possible, though a conflict among the pirates has reportedly erupted.
MT MOTIVATOR : Seized July 04, 2010. At 09h44 UTC (12h44 local time) on 4 July, the tanker's captain reported they were under small arms fire from a pirate attack in position 13°16N / 042°56E in the northern Bab Al Mandeb area - around 50nm north of the Bab al-Mandeb andg south when she was attacked by two small vessels in the southern Red Sea. After the initial notification of this attack, unsuccessful attempts were made to contact the Greek-owned vessel. The capture then was confirmed early on 5. July at Latitude: 11°33N, Longitude: 045°28E in the Gulf of Aden. Position 11 ° 50 / 45 ° 00 is Point A of the internationally protected maritime shipping corridor through the Gulf of Aden, called the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC). The 18 Filipino seafarers on board the MT MOTIVATOR (IMO 9340386) are all accounted for and safe, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) stated. Philippine's executive director Enrico Fos of the DFA's Office of the Under-secretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA) said the seafarers were able to communicate with their families to let them know that all crew is well. "The pirates had also already called the ship's principal earlier, but no demands have yet been made," he added back then. The MT MOTIVATOR, with a dead-weight of 13,065 tonnes has a crew of 18 Filipino nationals on board, though the Philippine government had ruled out that Pinoy crews could be allowed to sail these dangerous waters through the Gulf of Aden. The sea-jacked ship is a Marshall Islands flagged chemical and oil-products tanker loaded with lubrication-oil and therefore is posing the potential danger of an oil-spill. The vessel's registered owner is CLARION SHIPPING CO of Athens in Greece and there also the ship-manager EVALEND SHIPPING TANKERS CO SA resides. While at least one foreign warship intercepted the captured merchant-vessel's path towards the Somali coast and shadowed the situation, it has become clear that the pirate group hails from Puntland. The commandeered vessel stopped briefly north of Puntland and intended to proceed towards the pirate stronghold of Garacad, but it was then held close to Xabo (Habo) at the Gulf of Aden coast due to a dispute between the captors from Puntland and other pirate groups at Garacad. Xabo became infamous for the holding of two tugboats and their crews for over a year. Meanwhile negotiations seem to have become difficult while the Vessel and crew were then held off Bander Beyla at the North-Eastern Indian-Ocean coast of Puntland and only recently moved further south towards Eyl. Negotiations have not yet concluded and conflicts are reported.
MV SUEZ : Seized August 02, 2010. In the early hours at 0420 UTC of AUG 02, 2010, the MV SUEZ (IMO number 8218720) reported being under small arms fire from a pirate attack by one of 3 skiffs in position 13 02N - 048 54E and minutes later the Indian captain reported pirates on board.
After notification of the attack, attempts were made by the navies, who are supposed to protect the area, to make contact with the MV SUEZ, but to no avail. Egyptian-owned MV SUEZ was sailing under flag of convenience from Panama in the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) when it was attacked. Immediately after the first report a helicopter was directed to the ship but pirates had already taken over the command of the vessel, EU NAVFOR reported.
Two NATO warships, HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën and USS Cole, from the NATO counter piracy task force undertaking Operation OCEAN SHIELD, and a Singaporean warship the RSS Endurance from the CMF taskforce were within forty miles of MV Suez at the time of the attack. Despite reacting immediately and having a helicopter on the scene within 10 minutes, naval forces were unable to prevent the attack as the pirates had been able to board the ship within 5 minutes, NATO reported.
The case actually shows that though the ship was reportedly employing Best Management Practices, having barbed wire in place and fire hoses ready, the waters off Yemen and opposite Puntland are the most dangerous in the whole area. Somali sea-shifta are able to outwit and overcome any preventive measures - including arms on board, which only would drive the casualty figures higher. The incident actually highlights once again that it is high time to follow the advice to engage and help local Somali communities along the two coasts to make their coastlines safer themselves and to empower them to rule out the holding of any hostage from these innocent merchant vessels.
The MV SUEZ, with a deadweight of 17, 300 tonnes, has a crew of 24, according to NATO, while EU Navfor said 23 and the last crew-list: showed 21 with 9 Egyptians, 7 Pakistani, 3 Indians and 2 Sri Lankans. It, however, could be confirmed in the meantime that the 23 men crew consists of 11 Egyptians, 6 Indians, 4 Pakistani and 2 Sri Lankans. Crew and shipowner do not have an ITF Approved CBA agreement and - due to an overdue survey - the ship's classification status had been withdrawn by Germanischer Lloyd since 28. 06. 2010. The detailed, actual crew list is awaited. RED SEA NAVIGATION CO. serves as ship manager for owner MATSO SHIPPING CO. INC. - both from Port Tawfiq in Egypt. Red Sea Navigation's commercial director Mohamed Abdel Meguid said his company already paid a US$1.5 million ransom last year (actually it was the year before) for another hostage ship, the MV MANSOURAH 1 (aka Al Mansourah), which was sea-jacked on 03. September 2008 and released against the ransom after only 23 days. As DPA reported from Cairo a day later, an official with Red Sea Navigation Company, who declined to be identified publicly, said that the company would not pay a ransom and that the matter was being handled by the Foreign Ministry in Cairo.
MV SUEZ, the merchant vessel with a cargo of cement bags destined for Eritrea, was then commandeered towards the north-eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia and was expected at the pirate lair of Garacad in Puntland, but there pirate groups were fighting among each other and had come recently under pressure from Puntland forces. The vessel therefore dropped at first anchor near Bargaal and then was commandeered back again to the Gulf of Aden coast of Puntland, where it was held close to Bolimoog, between Alula and Habo at the very northern tip of the Horn of Africa. Thereafter the ship was moved again to the Indian Ocean coast near Dinowda Qorioweyn.
"The pirates are treating us toughly, and they took some of the crew to unknown place to exert pressure on owners of the ship," Farida Farouqe quoted her husband as telling her over the phone, as Xinhua news agency reported. The alleged demands vary between one, four and six million dollars, while officially the ship owner has been reported as saying already earlier that no ransom will be paid, while the cargo-owners seem to have been negotiating. Vessel and desperate crew were held off Dinowda Quorioweyn at the North-Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Puntland and until 12. December off Ceel Danaane.
Most recent reports state that the vessel, accompanied by a sea-jacked Iranian fishing vessel is ready to leave or has left the coast for another piracy mission, because the captors and the owners couldn't agree on a ransom.
YEMENI FISHING VESSEL : Seized August 26, 2010. The earlier reports provided by maritime observers speaking of the capture of a fishing vessel were confirmed now to the extend that the type and flag of the vessel have been identified. The Yemeni fishing vessel with at least 10 sailors on board was seized in the territorial waters of Somalia. The name of the vessel and Yemeni registration is not yet known. The Yemeni boat was sailing near the north coast of Somalia when the captors attacked it with small skiffs. They later headed toward the Somali coast. Present location unknown. At the beginning of November 2010 in total at least five Yemeni fishing vessels are held by the Somali sea-gangs and a detailed report is awaited from the Yemen authorities.
MT OLIB G : Seized September 08, 2010. Reports from our local observers were confirmed by EU NAVFOR: Early on the morning of 8 September, the Greek-owned, Malta-flagged Merchant Vessel (M/V) MT OLIB G (IMO 8026608) - a Greek-owned chemical tanker - was pirated in the east part of the protected Gulf of Aden corridor. After having received a report from a merchant vessel that a skiff was approaching MV OLIB G, and after several unsuccessful attempts to make contact with the vessel, the USS PRINCETON warship of Task Force 151 launched its helicopter. The helicopter was able to identify two pirates on board MT OLIB G, the EU report stated. The MT OLIB G was sailing West in the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor en route from Alexandria to India through the Gulf of Aden - allegedly carrying only ballast. The Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) is an area in which EU NAVFOR (Task Force 465), NATO (Task Force 508) and Combined Maritime Force (Task Force 151) coordinate the patrol of maritime transits. It is, however, not known yet if the vessel was involved in dumping or why it was just sailing with ballast. The MT OLIB G, deadweight 6,375 tons, has a crew of 18, among which are 15 Georgian and 3 Turkish. Crew and vessel are not covered by ITF Agreement. The vessel has as registered owners FRIO MARITIME SA and as manager FRIO VENTURES SA, both of Athens in Greece. The attack group is said to consist of people from the Majerteen (Puntland) and Warsangeli (Sanaag) clans, who had set out from Elayo. After the well timed attack - more or less synchronized with attacks on two other vessels - and the subsequent overpowering of the crew the vessel was then commandeered towards the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia, where it was first held near Eyl and then off Kulub. According to media reports the owner of the vessel initially offered a ransom of $75,000, but later raised it to $150,000. However, the sea pirates want no less than $15 million, a Press TV correspondent reported. Both sides seem to be not realistic. Vessel and crew are at present held approx. 38nm off Eyl at the North-Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia and different reports about conflicts have been received.
MSV NASTA AL YEMEN : Reportedly seized on Sept. 14, 2010. Number of crew yet unknown, but presumed 9. Further report awaited from Yemen.
MT ASPHALT VENTURE : Seized September 28, 2010. The Panama-flagged asphalt tanker MT ASPHALT VENTURE (IMO 8875798) was captured on her way from Mombasa - where the vessel left at noon on 27. September, southbound to Durban, at 20h06 UTC = 23h06 local time in position 07 09 S 40 59 E. The vessel was sailing in ballast and a second alarm was received at 00h58 UTC = 03h58 LT. The ship with its 15 all Indian crew was then observed to have turned around and is at present commandeered northwards to Somalia. EU NAVFOR confirmed the case only in the late afternoon of 29. September. Information from the ground says a pirate group from Brawa had captured the vessel and at first it was reported that the vessel was heading towards Harardheere at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast, while the tanker had first contact at the Somali coast near Hobyo and was then commandeered further north. The vessel is managed by ISM manager OMCI SHIPMANAGEMENT PVT LTD from Mumbai and owned by BITUMEN INVEST AS from Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, who uses INTER GLOBAL SHIPPING LTD from Sharjah, United Arab Emirates as ship-handler. The Government of India and other authorities are informed. Concerning the condition of the crew so far no casualties or injuries are reported, but the vessel seems to have an engine problem. Vessel and crew are at present held off Kulub at the North-Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia. Negotiations for a release have commenced.
FV GOLDEN WAVE 305 (sporting also the Korean name KEUMMI 305) : Seized October 09, 2010. The 241-to large South-Korean-owned but now apparently Kenyan-flagged fishing vessel, which had been transformed from an old merchant ship into a specialized fishing vessel, was already captured possibly in Somali waters, the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme (SAP) reported first.
The owners as well as the international navies kept mum until 17. October, when the British mastered Maritime Security Centre MSC(HOA) notified the case based on a statement by South Korea's Foreign Ministry.
Maritime observers working in Somalia with ECOTERRA Intl. had earlier confirmed that the vessel on that day was already held off the Central Somali coast off Harardheere (Xarardheere), from where then some movement again southwards was observed.
The owners, who had not reported the case earlier, said then that the position of the capture of the vessel and crew was 03:06S and 047:58E at 07h45 UTC (10h45 local) on 09. Oct. 2010 in the Somali Basin, which would be just 10 miles off the coast of Lamu on the north of the Kenyan coast and near the border with Somalia. But this report is highly questionable since local reports state that the vessel was boarded while inside the Somali waters.
However, ECOTERRA Intl. and SAP urged the Somalis to either open a formal and legal process to prosecute a case of illegal fishing, or to release the vessel, if there is evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that the ship and crew were not fishing illegally in Somali waters.
Since both countries, Kenya and Somalia have ratified the United Nations Common Law on the Sea (UNCLOS) since long, there is no doubt about the maritime boundary between the two states, despite the persistent haggling and attempts on higher levels to alter this.
The vessel is very well known since many years for its poaching operations was confirmed also by the Malindi Marine Association in Kenya (MaMa-Sea) and ECOP marine, a group of marine protection specialists. The vessel had been illegally entering the Somali fishing grounds with impunity over many years and then usually kept hanging out at the North Kenya banks as well as even off Malindi in order to cover the traces of the illegal activities.
Though the judiciaries of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia as well as e.g. of the regional State of Galmudug still face serious problems, a legal process is possible everywhere in Somalia and not only in Somaliland and Puntland, where the international community has recognized the legal procedures and regularly hands over pirates arrested by the foreign navies into these systems, which even are sentencing people to death and execute the death penalty. Especially because there is an official moratorium on fishing by foreign-flagged vessels in Somali waters since 2008 firmly in place and no legal licences have been issued, the case must be dealt with in front of a court.
ECOTERRA Intl. spokesman Dr. Hans-Juergen Duwe called upon specialized legal organizations, judges and lawyers from benches in friendly nations to come forward and assist the Somali judiciaries in prosecuting such cases, which all too easily are otherwise then just brushed away as pure piracy and thereby kept away from the eyes of the legal eagles and the law - thereby encouraging other fish-poachers to copycat, since the risk to be captured by Somali coastguards or the real buccaneers is still rather minimal.
The vessel has a large crew of 43 seafarers with the South-Korean owner cum master and a South-Korean chief engineer as well as two Chinese officers and 39 Kenyans.
Their venture is specialized on scooping by pot-fishing the ever declining populations of coastal crab and rock lobsters, a delicacy for the top-market seafood restaurants the world over, as well as in long-line fishing for the high-priced yellow-fin tuna and Kingfish as well as the rare bill-fish like Marlin and Sailfish as well as the already endangered sword-fish. For the tuna-fishing it would also have to be registered with the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), but the vessel is not listed there - neither as Keummi 305 nor as Golden Wave.
Also in Kenya local fishing co-operatives as well as the associations of deep-sea anglers had complained since long about the detrimental activities of this specific vessel, which is persistently using illegal gear. While in the mostly unprotected waters of Somalia their clandestine deals usually were covered with a handful of dollars into the palms of some unscrupulous businessmen, local "authorities" or impoverished local fellows, they apparently also enjoy "protection" from certain cadres in Kenya. However, fishermen contacted at the Kenya coast today actually jubilated that this vessel had been finally captured by the Somalis.
The pirates haven't contacted the ship's agent in the south-eastern South-Korean port city of Busan for any possible negotiation, Yonhap news agency said. The fisheries company that owns the ship shut down its Busan head office due to financial troubles in 2007 and has been operating only with the Keummi 305, it said.
Reports state that Captain Kim Dae Gun himself, who is on board, is the owner of the vessel.
The vessel at first was brought to Harardheere and then moved south to be held around 90 nm south of Harardheere, but on 23. October was then observed by naval forces in the vicinity of the point where a LPG tanker was sea-jacked the very day 50nm off Mombasa. The shipping agent could not confirm if the Somalis left their pirate-taxi and it is therefore presumed she shall again be used as mother-ship in Kenyan and Tanzanian waters. Apparently the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) is now no longer operating. Vessel and crew are at present held on their vessel off Hobyo at the Central Somali coast. Negotiations have not yet started in earnest and families of the seafarers fear the vessel might again be misused for dangerous piracy operations under a human shield for which the crew is abused.
The Captain of the Golden Wave 305 is urgent need of medication, and the whole crew may lack food soon.
MV IZUMI (ISUMI) : Seized on October 10, 2010. The multi-purpose ship MV IZUMI (IMO 9414955) was captured while en route from Japan via Singapore to Kenya in Somali waters at 13h09 UTC in position 01 39S 042 05E, which is around 170 nautical miles (314 kilometers) south of Mogadishu, and has an all- Filipino crew of 20 seamen.
The ship, which has a deadweight of 20,170 tonnes, is owned by Japanese shipping company NYK-Hinode Line Ltd., one of the oldest shipping lines plying the routes from the Far East to East Africa, and is flying a flag of convenience from Panama. The ship is owned by DIA S.A. and had been carrying steel products for the automotive industry from Japan via Singapore towards Mombasa, said its Tokyo-based operator NYK-Hinode Line.
While in the years back the company still had Japanese officers on board of their vessel, they have now all-Filipino crews despite the ban by the government of the Philippines to employ their nationals on routes endangered by piracy.
EU NAVFOR confirmed the case on 11. Oct. and reported the vessel at a position 170 miles (274 kilometres) south of the Somali capital of Mogadishu and as being commandeered northwards, while a Danish and the EU NAVFOR French warship FS FLOREAL were close by and were monitoring. Vessel and crew have been now commandeered to Xamdule (Hamdule) between Hobyo and Harardheere at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast.
Japan's transport minister Sumio Mabuchi on Tuesday said Tokyo was "nervously" watching developments while cooperating with the International Maritime Organization in dealing with the suspected pirate attack.
Japan last year joined the United States, China and more than 20 other countries in the maritime operation against pirates who have attacked ships off the Horn of Africa, a key route leading to the Suez Canal.
Tokyo has also dispatched two maritime surveillance aircraft and scores of military personnel to beef up its anti-piracy mission, although their operations are restricted by the country's pacifist constitution.
Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force has deployed two destroyers to escort ships in the pirate-infested gulf, and said last month that it had so far provided safe passage for more than 1,000 ships.
MV IZUMI with her hostages as human shield is at present used as piracy launch and attacked first a merchant vessel MV TORM KANSAS near Pemba Island on the boundary between Kenya and Tanzania and on 06. November the EU NAVFOR Spanish warship ESPS INFANTA CHRISTINA and her escort object, the AMISOM weapons-transporter PETRA 1, off the East coast of Somalia. The vessel is still out hunting.
FV AL FAHAD : Seized October 11, 2010. Many more Iranian fishing vessel were over time actually held by Somali gangs than listed, since their cases and the fate of their sailors are not officially reported - neither by Iran nor the Western Navies.
Sources with detailed knowledge from Iran stated after the release of one Iranian fishing vessel without ransom but actually a reward paid to their captain for good assistance during piracy operations of other vessels at the end of October 2010, that at least one other Iranian fishing vessels is held at present near Garacad. How many were seized for illegal fishing in Somali waters or how many were sea-jacked just to use them as piracy launch or to press ransom could so far not clearly be established.
One Indian Navy vessel not involved in anti-piracy operations received a distress call from a merchant vessel pointing out it had spotted pirate skiffs with the Al-Fahad. The naval vessel on research mission intercepted on 10. December 2010.
"Six skiffs, with outboard motors, an AK-47 with ammunition, gas cylinders and fuel was found on board the dhow after it was intercepted... the pirate boat was then disabled," said an officer. Indian naval sources maintained that the Dhow had not been sunk.
According to those Indian naval sources there were 31 people on board. Unfortunately the Indian navy ship must not have realized that this was a sea-jacked vessel and let the Somalis and allegedly Yemeni men on board sail away after they destroyed the so called pirate-paraphernalia.
It also becomes obvious that crews collaborate with pirates to use their ships as transporters, pirate launches or even as attack vessels.
Allegedly the vessel flies now a flag from Yemen and Indian naval sources maintain the vessel was not sunk.
Though some naval sources in the region doubt the Indian report, the vessel therefore has to be kept on the list of sea-jacked ships.
MSV ZOULFICAR : Seized near Socotra on October 19, 2010. This is a motorized sailing dhow, which was captured near the Socotra archipelago. It must not be mixed with the case of Comorian MV ALY ZOULFECAR. Yemen authorities stated that it would not be a Yemeni vessel, but could possibly be from Iran. Further details awaited.
MT YORK : Seized October 23, 2010. The Singapore-flagged MT YORK (IMO 9220421), Liquid Petroleum Gas Carrier, had left Mombasa on 23. October in the morning at 06h00 en route to the Seychelles. The vessel was then attacked at around 17h30 local time (14h30 UTC) by two skiffs, approximately 98 nautical miles East of Mombasa in Kenya. The Turkish warship TCG GAZIANTEP, operating under the Combined Maritime Forces (Task Force 151) launched her helicopter to investigate and was able to observe pirates with weapons on board the vessel. The LPG Tanker is owned by Greek Interunity Management Corporation (IMC) and had just transported a cargo of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) to Mombasa.
Gerald Lim, a director of the ship owner York Maritime Company Private Ltd, said there was no word on the ship or crew since it put out a distress call on Saturday. Initially the MT YORK was drifting but then began moving at 10 knots in the morning of 24. October, when then the Singapore-flagged LPG tanker,was finally confirmed pirated in the Somali Basin by EU NAVFOR. It seems that the South-Korean fishing vessel FV GOLDEN WAVE 305 (alias FV KEUMMI 305), captured from an illegal fishing trip in Somali waters on 9 October 2010, was used to sea-jack the MT YORK
The vessel, with a dead-weight of 5,076 tons, has a crew of 17, including the German Master, two Ukrainians and 14 Filipinos. The vessel was commandeered towards Harardheere and Hobyo with a possible final holding ground off Garacad.
MSV AL-NASSR : Seized October 28, 2010 off Socotra.The motorized Dhow was captured on October 28, 2010 at 11h56 UTC (14h56 local time) in position 12:08N – 054:25E off Socotra Island, Somalia, according to the IMB Piracy reporting centre. Once a British protectorate, along with the remainder of the Mahra State of Qishn and Socotra and being a strategic important point, the four islands making the Archipelago of Socotra were accorded by the UN in 1967 to Yemen, though they are very close to the mainland of the tip of north-eastern Somalia. Several of the female lineages of the inhabitants on the island, notably those in mtDNA haplogroup N, are reportedly found nowhere else on earth. The Dhow with presently unknown flag and about 10 crew is heading now towards the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor of the Gulf of Aden (IRTC) and is likely to be used as pirate-base and decoy to capture a larger vessel. Further reports are awaited.
MT POLAR : Seized Oct. 30, 2010. Armed pirates in two skiffs boarded and sea-jacked the Liberian-owned product tanker MT POLAR (IMO 9299563) with 24 crew members aboard in the very early morning hours at 01h40 UTC (04h30 local time on 30. October 2010 in position 12:12N – 064:53E, which is according to the Piracy Reporting Centre 633nm east of Socotra island, off Somalia or 684 miles (1,100 kilometres) east of the Indian Ocean island of Socotra according to EU NAVFOR. According to a EU NAVFOR statement the owners of the Panamanian-flagged 72,825 dwt vessel MV POLAR, Herculito Maritime Ltd, confirmed early Saturday that pirates are in command of the ship. While it is undisputed that the ship originally 24 crew members, EU NAVFOR reported one Romanian, three Greek nationals, four nationals from Montenegro and 16 Filipinos, but according to the ICSW (International Committee on Seafarer's Welfare) there are three Greek nationals, 16 Pinoy seafarers, three from Montenegro and one Romanian as well as one Serb. In connection with this case AFP concluded that though naval powers have deployed dozens of warships to patrol the region's waters they have failed to stem piracy, one of the few thriving businesses for coastal communities in a country devastated by war and poverty. According to reports from Somalia the already sea-jacked Iranian fishing vessel from Hobyo was used to capture this vesse in tandem with covering VLCC SHAMHO DREAM. Allegedly the captain of the Iranian fishing vessel thereafter received money from the pirates and was released with his vessel and crew. MT POLAR has reached the Somali coast in the morning of 30. October and was held off Hobyo. On Monday, 22. November 2010 one Filipino seafarer was reported by the Seafarers Network from Greece to have died allegedly of a heart attack.
At 02h33UTC on 23 November 2010, MV POLAR was reported in position 07°49N 055°53E - apparently on a piracy mission.
At 19h40 UTC on 25. November 2010, MV POLAR was observed in position 09 29N 068 44E, course 258, speed 12.6 kts. The pirated vessel is conducting piracy operations, using the surviving crew members as human shield.
established.
SY CHOIZIL : Seized 26. October 2010. South-African owned SY CHOIZIL was sea-jacked after having left Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Though news through the seafarer's network had broken much earlier, the case was officially only confirmed on 08. November. The yacht is owned and was sailed by South African skipper Peter Eldridge from Richards Bay on the northeast coast of KwaZulu Natal, who escaped after the yacht was commandeered to Somalia, while his South African team-mates Bruno Pelizzari (aka Pekezari), in his 50's, with partner Deborah from Durban were taken off the boat and are still held hostage on land in Somalia. Several questions remain still unanswered, though after the return of the skipper to South-Africa it was officially stated that the yacht had been abducted off Kenya this is still conflicting with other naval reports. Since the own yacht of the abducted couple is still moored at the harbour in Dar es Salaam it could well be that they only joined or actually hired skipper Eldridge first for a short trip north to Kenya.
Both present hostages, Bruno Pelizzari and his girlfriend "Debbie", Deborah Calitz, were on board when the yacht under the command of Peter Endrigde allegedly heading south to Richards Bay from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on October 21 or 22. Together with the skipper and owner of the yacht, the trio were said at first to have then encountered the pirates on 31. October 2010 in the open sea.
At least one of the attacking pirates appeared to have been from Tanzania and spoke KiSwahili. However, the sloop rigged sailing yacht set up for long distance cruising was then commandeered to Somalia by five Somalis - apparently with the aim to reach Harardheere at the Central Somali coast.
When observers had on 04. November a sighting of a yacht near the Bajuni Island of Koyaama at the Southern coast of Somalia, the search for a missing yacht was on in order to identify the boat and the sailors, but neither the Seychelles nor the network of yachts-people reported any missing yacht, though at that point already even the involvement of a second yacht was not ruled out.
Navies were then trailing the yacht at least since 04. November.
The fleeing yacht was on 06. November forced by the pursuing navies to come close to Baraawa (Brawa). There the yacht had "officially" again been located by the EU NAVFOR warship FS FLOREAL when it was "discovered to be sailing suspiciously close to shore", so the statement. Despite numerous unsuccessful attempts to contact the yacht, including a flypast by the warship's helicopter, allegedly no answer was received and the French warship launched her boarding team to investigate further, a EU NAVFOR statement revealed and it was also officially stated that they had received a Mayday signal. Why only then the emergency call was sent and not much earlier, has so far not been explained.
After a direct chase by naval forces escalating the situation and the yacht running aground, SY CHOIZIL's skipper Peter reportedly jumped over board during a close naval swoop, when also shots were fired and a naval helicopter and a commando team in a speedboat were engaged. Other reports state the owner of the yacht, Peter Eldridge, managed to escape when he refused to leave the boat he built with his own hands 20 years ago. Officials now put it as "the yacht's skipper refused to cooperate" - usually a call for immediate and even deadly response in any hostage situation the world over where armed assailants are involved.
However, Peter Eldridge was later picked up by the French navy and was placed into safety on a Dutch naval vessel. He is confirmed to be a South-African by nationality and his next of kin were informed immediately. After he then arrived at the Kenyan harbour of Mombasa on board the Dutch warship, he was handed over to South African officials and brought to Kenya's capital Nairobi, from where he returned to South-Africa.
Peter Eldridge, who was a member of the Zululand Yacht Club which uses the Richards Bay Harbour as its base, stated later: "The yacht was attacked by pirates - all men aged between 15 and 50 - on October 26," and thereafter: "They demanded money. They took the money that Deborah and Pelizzari were carrying for their families. They demanded more and we told them that we did not have more because we were ordinary people."
Andrew Mwangura, co-ordinator of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, said earlier he assumed the yacht had been towed to Mombasa as could have been expected with all the naval presence, but at the same time ECOTERRA Intl. received information from their marine monitors in Somalia saying the yacht was left behind by the naval forces and was floating. Peter Eldridge's wife, Bernadette, told later the South African Times that she did not know whether her husband Peter would return to Somalia to retrieve what's left of his yacht, SY Choizil, which was run aground during the incident. It is, however, unclear how official statements and the owner himself can speak of "having resisted to the pirates" and insisting that he "was not leaving his yacht alone", when at the same time he must have left it to be rescued by the navy.
"We only can hope that the different reports speaking of the killing of one man, whereby at present nobody can say if that had been caused by the naval interaction or by the pirates or if it is mixed with another case, will turn out to be not correct at all," a spokesman from ECOTERRA Intl. said on 07. November and added: "and we hope and urge the local elders to ensure that the innocent woman and man will be set free immediately. Since the Al-Shabaab administration, who governs vast areas in Southern Somalia, where the ancient coastal town of Baraawe (Brawa) is located, had earlier openly condemned any act of piracy, it is hoped that a safe and unconditional release of the hostages can be achieved."
The naval command of the European Operation Atalanta stated on 09. November that the whereabouts of the other two crew members is currently unknown, despite a comprehensive search by an EU NAVFOR helicopter.
Karl Otto of the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Cape Town stated that the Department of International Relations and Co-operation was handling the hostage situation.
International Relations and Co-operation spokesperson Saul Kgomotso Molobi confirmed this on 10. November and said the pirates had not yet made any ransom demand.
While the families of the Durban couple are sick with worry while they wait to hear from the kidnappers, the skipper's wife said: "We have been restricted from giving out more information. I have been told not to say more," but did not want to reveal who had told her to keep quiet.
South African High Commissioner Ndumiso Ntshinga said he is in constant contact with authorities in Somalia who are involved in the search for Bruno Pelizzari and his girlfriend.
Ntshinga indicated that maybe the story that the were taken off Kenya - as the Seychelles had claimed - is not correct, by saying: "We have always believed that their reach was mostly around Somalia but if they are going to be going down to the Gulf of Mozambique then it is worrying," said Ntshinga. Naval sources not with EU NAVFOR had earlier stated the attack was at the boundary between Tanzania and Kenya while other naval sources had spoke of the boundary between Tanzania and Mozambique.
After two weeks into the crisis the South African government still stated only: "At this point in time we do not know where they are. We have instructed our consulate to handle the matter," foreign ministry spokesman Malusi Mogale told AFP.
Director of Consular Services at the International Relations Department, Albie Laubscher, said all they can do is wait.
"The situation is that we are expecting the pirates to make contact in some way or another."
Information from Somalia says that the couple was held then for a few days held firth south and then inside Brawa but thereafter was moved to an undisclosed location.
For the Government of South Africa Mr. Albie Laubscher, the director of consular services at the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, said the families of the Durban couple had been briefed that the hostage drama could be a long, drawn-out affair. He said it was government policy not to pay ransom.
The escaped skipper Peter Eldridge maintains that they had been sea-jacked off the Kenyan coast, but failed to explained why they were there instead on their planned route to the South from Dar es Salaam.
A friend of Pelizzari, Jason Merle, said the former elevator technician had decided about four years ago to sell his house and build a yacht. 'He and Debbie invested their lives in that boat, which is now docked in Dar es Salaam, waiting for them to come back to Tanzania,' Merle said. 'They don't have any money. Neither does the family. Ransom is going to be pointless. They're not going to get anything out of that couple. The only thing they have is that yacht and a laptop.'
The abducted yacht SY CHOIZIL is still held at the Somali coast, while the couple is now said to be held somewhere in the area of Somalia's embattled capital Mogadishu.
In an effort to send the message to pirates that Deborah is African born and should not be treated like a European or an American, Deborah's brother Dale van der Merwe has denied media reports his sister was of British or Italian descent.
'She does not have any British ties and has never set foot in Britain. We are worried that should her captors read this... it may skew their perception of who Debbie really is and try attach values to her as it was done in the case of the recently released British Chandler couple.'
He said the couple were 'ordinary workers'. They had been sailing for almost two years, stopping at ports on Africa's coast to 'visit and do occasional work'. See: http://yachtpals.com/node/12445
'Anyone who knows or meets them (including their captors) will see that they are gentle and kind people who are not interested in politics but only love sailing, ' he said and added 'Debbie and Bruno will help anyone regardless of their politics, religion, nationality or race, and frequently at their own cost. They are just fellow Africans who work hard and have a passion for sailing."
The family asked the couple's captors to keep them unharmed and release them back to their families and children, whom they have not seen for so long.
The Dutch Navy detained two groups of Somalis during the last week of November, believing those arrested could be involved in the abduction of Bruno Pelizzari and his girlfriend Deborah Calitz. The people on board of two different skiffs threw their guns overboard when they realised they were about to be attacked by a naval force. But only skipper Peter Eldridge would be able to confirm whether any of the suspects were involved in the attack. Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme said fishermen and coastal traders also carried weapons in these dangerous waters and the Dutch Navy could have the wrong men and add to the complications. The Kenyan and the South-African government had refused to accept the men for prosecution, since there was no evidence, and the Dutch Navy was for days in limbo - not knowing what to do with them. Then on 05 November five of these Somalis were flown on a military plane to Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands to stand trial in Rotterdam for abducting the two South Africans from their yacht. The five were among some 20 suspected pirates rounded up last month in two separate operations. The other 15 were released due to a lack of evidence at an undisclosed location and their case is seen by human rights lawyers as illegal arrest and possible refoulement.
After now more than one month the South African government maintains that no ransom demands have been made, but has not stated if there was no contact or if other demands were brought forward.
According to South African officials there was still no sign of the South African couple captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia at the end of November and Carte Blanche spoke to their Durban-based families, who are concerned that there've been no ransom demands.
International Relations spokesman Clayson Monyela said on 10. December that the kidnappers have yet to make contact with the South African government or the relatives of Bruno Pelizzari and his partner, Deborah Calitz.
It seems that the first contact possibilities were lost by the South-African officials.
The daughter of Mrs. Calitz also appealed now to the captors to at least come forward and start talks on a release.
MV ALY ZOULFECAR : Seized November 03, 2010. The Comorian-flagged vessel a was pirated en route between the Comores and Dar Es Salam (Tanzania). The 43 meters long vessel was attacked in the morning of 3 November 2010 in position 05°15 S 043°39 E while in transit. Shortly thereafter the Master of the vessel reported that pirates were on board, EU NAFOR confirmed. The MV ALY ZOULFECAR has 29 people on board, of which 9 are crew members and 20 passengers. The crew consists of 1 Tanzanian, 4 Comorian and 4 Madagascar. The passengers consist of 12 Tanzanian and 8 Comorian. This makes a total of 13 Tanzanian, 12 Comorian and 4 Malagasy on board the pirated vessel. But it is said now that there is also a Kenyan woman on board. Though yet unconfirmed, latest reports speak of at least one casualty on board. The vessel is slowly commandeered North along the Somali Indian Ocean coast, she passed Hobyo and is expected to be taken to Garacad.
MSV AL BOGARI : Sighted November 7, 2010, as being hijacked, no further data
PAKISTAN MSV : Seized on November 9, 2010. The motorized dhow with a so far unknown number of crew was sea-jacked around 850nm east from the NE-coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean and then used to capture the Tunisian merchant ship MV HANNIBAL II three days later in the same wider area. The authorities of Pakistan have been informed and further information about the name of the vessel etc. are awaited.
MT HANNIBAL II : Seized November 11, 2010 In the early morning hours the Tunisian-owned and Panama-flagged chemical and oil-tanker MT HANNIBAL II (IMO 8011756) with a crew of 31 was taken at 04h35 UTC in position 11:26N – 066:05E off the coast of India while sailing to Suez from Malaysia - ferrying vegetable oil.
"The master of the vessel reported that he had been attacked and boarded by pirates in an area some 860 nautical miles East of The Horn of Africa which is considerably closer to India than it is to Somalia," EU Navfor said in a statement.
The 31 men strong crew of the 24,105 tonne ship consists of 23 Tunisians, four Filipinos, a Croat, a Georgian, a Russian and a Moroccan.
GABES MARINE TANKERS SARL as ship-manager fronts for the owner POLO NAVIGATION LTD - both of Ez Zahra, Tunisia.
Reportedly the chief engineer of the vessel was slightly injured with a hit of a gun-butt during the attack and the ship had at first arrived near Garacad at the North-Eastern Somali coast of the Indian Ocean.
At 01h05 UTC on 23. November 2010 MV HANNIBAL II was reported in position 10°30N 059°04E - apparently on a piracy mission.
At 06h31 UTC on 26. November 2010 MV HANNIBAL II was observed chasing a merchant vessel in position 18°50N 061°23E, course 300°, speed 7.8 knots. The pirated vessel was conducting piracy operations but then came to the Somali coast again.
On 17. December a crew-member with a serious medial condition was successfully evacuated with the consent of the captors of the vessel and in a joined naval medivac operation led by a Thai navy vessel as well as the immediate medical treatment on a German warship. The crew member of the hijacked vessel MV Hannibal II, who was released by the pirates, has arrived at the Bouffard hospital in Djibouti after being treated for a suspected appendicitis after having been treated by medical staff on board the EUNAVFOR German warship FGS HAMBURG. He is now described as being stable and very happy to be free. Narrating his time as a hostage, he said: "We were all kept the whole time on the bridge of our ship. The only possibilities to move were the few minutes when we were allowed to go to eat. Most of the times we got some rice with fish." Like in other cases pirates had offered the sick man to be released without conditions, but this is the first time that the ship-owner, captain and crew played along. In other cases like when a Ukrainian woman had an abortion, neither the vessel owner nor even the Ukrainian parliament facilitated a possible medical evacuation.
Now the vessel is moored off Dinowda Quorioweyn not far from Garacad at the north-eastern Indian Ocean coast of Somalia.
MV YUAN XIANG : Seized November 12, 2010. The Chinese-owned general cargo ship MV YUAN XIANG (IMO 7609192) carrying 29 sailors of Chinese nationality was seized during the night by an unknown number of pirates in the Arabian Sea in position 18:02.55N – 066:03.39E - around 680nm east of Salalah, Oman. An act of piracy was then confirmed on 12.11.2010 at 07h01 UTC.
According to the China Marine Rescue Centre (CMRC), the Chinese-owner-manager and Ningbo-based Hongyuan Ship Management Ltd (HONGYUAN MARINE CO LTD) in Zhejiang, China, had received a call just before midnight whereby the pirates informed that they were sailing the vessel owned by HONGAN SHIPPING CO LTD to Somalia.
The 22,356 dwt vessel flies a flag of convenience (FOC) from Panama, a flag-state who apparently even doesn't care when sailors are dying an unnatural death on their registered vessels.
The CMRC was reportedly unable to get in touch with the hijacked ship and the fate of the sailors remained unclear, Xinhua said, adding that the attacked occurred outside a region protected by a multinational forces, including China's navy. The vessel was for a certain time at Xabo (Habo) at the Gulf of Aden coast but was then commandeered around the Horn into the Indian Ocean and is at present held off Dhanane, south of Garacad at the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia.
FV DUL-NURAIN : Seized on November 17, 2010. The Yemeni fishing vessel was captured from Hurdia, which is 40 miles from Bargal. Allegedly a Somali Muse Ali Mohamud Warfa (aka Ilkacase) a Majerteen whose sub-clan is Osman Mohamoud and who served as fishing agent on that boat, was killed and was then burried by elders from the Isse Mohamud subclan. The vessel is at present held at Dhinawda which 60 miles to Garacad.
FV AL JEESH : Seized around November 18, 2010, maybe even together with FV DUL-NURAIN. Fish-poacher, now used as piracy launch.
COMORAN FV : Seized on November 18, 2010. The Comoros-flagged fishing vessel with a two man crew was confirmed sea-jacked inside the territorial waters of the Comoros. So far the identity of the vessel has not been released.
MV ALBEDO : Seized on November 26, 2010. The Malaysia-flagged box-ship MV ALBEDO en route from Jebel Ali in the UAE to Mombasa in Kenya was boarded in the early morning hours and an alarm was raised at 03h00 UTC (06h00 LT) in position 05:38N – 068:27E, which is around 255 nm west of the Maldives group of islands. The master had reported to the Malaysian owners already on that fateful Friday that pirates were on-board and his vessel was hijacked. That information was then forwarded to to the navies. However, EU NAVFOR confirmed only 3 days later on mid-Monday that the vessel was captured. Why EU NAVFOR only reported so late is not known, but maybe because a Danish Navy frigate was sailing Saturday to the rescue of the German freighter MCL Bremen, a multi-purpose 130-metre freighter, which was nearby attacked by pirates. But following standard procedures, the whole crew barricaded themselves in a secret room and the attackers later left that vessel before the warship arrived and MLC BREMEN is reportedly sailing free.
The container vessel MV ALBEDO has a crew of 23 sailors. Six hail from Sri Lanka and others from Pakistan, Iran and Bangladesh. Registered owner and manager is MAJESTIC ENRICH SHIPPING SDN. The vessel is held now south of Ceel Gaan at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast off Harardheere.
FV KANTARI 12 : Seized before November 30, 2010. The vessel was used to capture FV LAKMALI and FV LAKMINI 03. Further reports concerning the whereabouts of this vessel awaited.
FV LAKMINI 03 : Seized November 30, 2010. Sri Lankan 40 ft. fishing vessel FV LAKMINI 03 (Reg: IMUL-A-0453-KLT) was captured together with FV LAKMALI taken hostage while in international waters and after they had gone fishing from Beruwala on November 20, 2010. The pirates launched the attack from another commandeered vessel - the FV KANTARI 12.
The crew consists of six Sri Lankans and in addition two abducted fishermen from the earlier release FV LAKMALI: Mr. Lal Fernando and Mr. Sugath Fernando.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry of Sri Lanka has requested their envoys in Nairobi / Kenya to follow up on these sea-jacking cases.
The present location of the vessel is not known.
MV JAHAN MONI : Seized December 05, 2010. The Bangladesh-flagged bulk carrier MV JAHAN MONI was sea-jacked by alleged Somali pirates position 08:12N – 071:55E, which is around 67 nm west of Minicoy Island and the merchant vessel was reported hijacked by six armed pirates and 26 people were taken hostage barely 70 nautical miles off the Indian Lakshadweep Islands. At 09h42 UTC on 05 December NATO reported the merchant vessel was under attack by pirates in 1 skiff in position 08°10N 071°43E. The vessel was attacked twice before being boarded by the heavily armed pirates and in an area, where a multi-ship task force of the Indian Navy was carrying out search operations in the Arabian Sea for pirate mother vessels. EU NAVFOR finally confirmed on 06 December that the bulker was pirated in the Somali Basin, approximately 1300 nautical miles East of Somalia, and only 300 nautical miles from the Indian mainland coast.
Apparently one of the previously sea-jacked fishing vessels was used to launch the attack.
The vessel was en route rom Indonesia with 43,150 tonnes of nickel ore on board to take them to Greece via Singapore.
It is owned by Mohammed Shajahan, owner of leading mild steel producing company KSRM and Bangladeshi shipping company Brave Royal. All people on board - 25 crew and one woman - are reported to be Bangladeshi.
The vessel was commandeered at a speed of 10 nautical miles towards the Somali coast and arrived there on Saturday 10. Dec. 2010 early morning, as was also confirmed by owner Mohammad Shahjahan for the owners and Rahmatullah, technical officer of Brave Royal Shipping Management Limited - the operating firm of the ship, confirmed - though they doesn't have contact yet. Marine superintendent of the company Captain Mohammad Golam Mostafa confirmed that the ship had been anchored at the east coast of Garacad.
Officials of SR Shipping Limited, the owning company of the hijacked ship, and its sister concern Brave Royal Shipping Management Limited held a meeting to chalk out the negotiation with the pirates, if they contact after reaching the shore.
The authorities could not yet contact with any of the crew or pirates. A satellite telephone to the ship on Saturday morning remained unanswered, Mostafa added.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has assured "all-out" support to free the vessel and crew, he said.
A senior Bangladesh Shipping Ministry official said: "Our first priority is to bring back the lady as soon as possible," referring to the wife of the chief engineer.
Mohammed Shahjahan, chairman of Brave Royal Shipping Management Limited that owns the ship, MV Jahan Moni, stated on Sunday, 12. December 2010, that the pirates put him through to the captain, chief engineer and the chief engineer's wife on telephone. They talked twice, at 2:30pm and at 7pm, he said. A serious conflict between two Somali groups, who claimed "ownership" of that vessel, broke out already before the vessel arrived at the Somali coast. It is held now off Dhanane, south of Garacad, at the Northern Somali Indian Ocean coast.
MSC PANAMA : Seized December 10, 2010. At 12h12 UTC (09h12 LT) on 10 December 2010 the U.S.-owned container vessel MSC PANAMA was reported to be under attack by an armed group of in total five sea-shifta in two skiffs on board in position 09°57S 041°46E. A Rocket Propelled Grenade was used during the attack which occurred approximately 80 nautical miles east of the Tanzanian/Mozambique border. On the afternoon of 10 December, the merchant vessel was then confirmed pirated and in position Latitude: 10°00S Longitude: 041°51E.
The boxship was en route from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) to Beira (Mozambique) when the attack occurred.
This southerly attack in the Western Indian Ocean is a further example of the constantly expanding area of pirate activity, triggered by naval activities in the Gulf of Aden and close to the Somali shores and apparently also serving an agenda of implicating more and more regional countries. Apparently one of the the previously sea-jacked fishing vessels was used in the attack.
The 26,288 dwt MCS PANAMA is a Liberian flagged container ship, operated by SHIP MANAGEMENT SERVICES INC from Coral Gables Florida, a US based company fronting for registered owner EURUS BERLIN LLC.
The vessel has a crew of 23 seafarers, who all are from Myanmar/Burma).
"The Somali pirates let the Burmese crewmen call their families three days ago. All said they were in good health and told their families not to worry about them," an official at the Rangoon branch of St. John's Ship Management said on condition of anonymity to Mizzima News.
Although the crewmen were not in mortal danger, they needed to keep their spirits up while being held by the pirates, Htay Aung, a central executive committee member of the junta-supported Myanmar Overseas Seafarers' Association, said.
The release of the MSC Panama and the crewmen would depend on the negotiations between the pirates and the company and such talks normally takes more than two months, Thai-based Seafarers' Union of Burma official Aung Thura told Mizzima. His union has been outlawed by the Burmese ruling military junta.
The vessel arrived in Somalia and is held now south of Ceel Gaan at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast off Harardheere, close to MV ALBEDO.
MV RENUAR : Seized: December 11, 2010. As ECOTERRA Intl. reported the cargo vessel was captured on 11. December 2010 at around 05h40 UTC in position 06:09N – 067:19E, which is approximately 360nm SW of Minicoy Island, 1,200nm from Mogadishu in Somalia and 550nm off the Indian coast. On 13. November also NATO finally confirmed and stated the vessel was captured at position Latitude: 06°11N Longitude: 067°25E. EU NAVFOR had earlier confirmed our reports on 12. December.
Panama-flagged MV RENUAR is a bulk cargo vessel with a dead-weight of 70,156 tonnes and was en route to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates from Port Louis in Mauritius when it was captured on Saturday, EU NAVFOR confirmed and stated: "The pirates have confirmed that they have control of the ship which is now heading west towards the Somali coast." The EU said it was a Liberian-owned vessel.
But Europe's best ship register states that CANDY ENT INC from Greece is the registered owner and MARYVILLE MARITIME INC from Greece the manager. Though the Greek ship register is notoriously in shambles, it is not known how EU NAVFOR did arrive at the conclusion that the vessel would be Liberian owned.
The pirates launched the attack from 2 skiffs, supported by a mother ship, with fire of small arms and rocket propelled grenades forcing the merchant vessel to stop. The bulker has a 24-man all-Filipino crew, who attempted to evade the pirates for some time, causing the pirates to make several attacks before finally boarding the vessel. One of the pirates had died during the attack - marine observers reported yesterday.
That at present more and more of the previously already captured fast fishing vessels are used to launch far-reaching attacks is widely known and analysts can not understand why these vessels are not tracked better by the navies.
The bulk carrier MV RENUAR (IMO9042221) is at present commandeered to the Somali coast, but naval centres stated that they had at that moment no communications with the ship and that the condition of the crew is not known.
The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines said it was working to ensure the safety of 24 Filipino seafarers on board the Panama-flagged vessel MV Renuar. In a release posted on its website on Monday, the DFA's Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA) said that it has instructed Capt. Gaudencio Collado, Philippine Liaison Officer to the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) in Manama, Bahrain to assist in the rescue efforts and that the European Union Naval Forces (EU NAVFOR) will attempt a rescue before the vessel, now en route to Somalia, reaches Somali waters.
Analysts, however, see such sabre-rattling as rather unfortunate and advised that the DFA should better look into the policy, which once had stopped Filipino seafarers from signing on with ships plying such dangerous routes.
DFA Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr. also instructed Collado to convey to the EU NAVFOR the Philippine Government's "paramount concern" for the safety of the Filipino crew members. The OUMWA likewise called on the Philippine Embassy in Athens to convey the same message to the vessel's Greece-based owner. The crew had locked themselves in a compartment but were later overwhelmed and the pirates are in control of the vessel. The captain contacted a humanitarian organization and reported that the crew is all right. The ship arrived on 20. December south of Garacad at the Northern Somali Indian Ocean coast.
MSV SALIM AMADI : Seized December 15, 2010. The motorized cargo dhow of most likely Indian origin was seized at 10h00 LT (07h00 UTC) some 70nm from Bosaso on her way from Dubai to this harbour town of the regional state of Puntland in Somalia. Number of crew and fate not known.
MV ORNA : Seized December 20, 2010. The UAE-owned, Panama-flagged bulker MV ORNA (IMO 8312162) was in the morning of 20. December 2010 at 08h29LT (11h29 UTC) reported under attack by pirates in position Latitude: 01°46S Longitude: 060°32E.The bulk carrier was under way to India from Durban and is laden with coal.
NATO reported that the attack was launched from 2 attack skiffs, with pirates firing small arms and rocket propelled grenades at the merchant vessel en route in the Indian Ocean, approximately 400 nautical miles North East of the island-state of the Seychelles. The vessel was stopped and boarded by at least 4 pirates.
The bulk carrier was then pirated, EU NAVFOR confirmed later and that the number o f crew on board was unknown.
The crew is co-operating and no damage is reported, the EU statement reads, which also stated that MV ORNA was not registered with the naval centres of MSCHOA or UKMTO.
The MV ORNA is a Panama flagged, UAE owned bulk cargo vessel with a dead weight of 27,915 tonnes.
The vessels safety management certificate had been withdrawn by Nippon Kaiji Kyokai already on 14. October this year and the crew is also not covered by an ITF agreement, but unlike other UAE-owned vessels it has still at least an insurance with Sveriges Angfartys Assurans Forening (Swedish Club). Ship manager SWEDISH MANAGEMENT CO SA in Dubai fronts for registered owner SIRAGO SHIPMANAGEMENT SA.There are 19 sailors on board and the crew comprises of one Sri Lankan and 18 Syrians.
The vessel is at present commandeered towards the Somali coast.
The 22,356 dwt vessel flies a flag of convenience (FOC) from Panama, a flag-state who apparently even doesn't care when sailors are dying an unnatural death on their registered vessels.
The CMRC was reportedly unable to get in touch with the hijacked ship and the fate of the sailors remained unclear, Xinhua said, adding that the attacked occurred outside a region protected by a multinational forces, including China's navy. The vessel was for a certain time at Xabo (Habo) at the Gulf of Aden coast but was then commandeered around the Horn into the Indian Ocean and is at present held off Dhanane, south of Garacad at the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia.
FV DUL-NURAIN : Seized on November 17, 2010. The Yemeni fishing vessel was captured from Hurdia, which is 40 miles from Bargal. Allegedly a Somali Muse Ali Mohamud Warfa (aka Ilkacase) a Majerteen whose sub-clan is Osman Mohamoud and who served as fishing agent on that boat, was killed and was then burried by elders from the Isse Mohamud subclan. The vessel is at present held at Dhinawda which 60 miles to Garacad.
FV AL JEESH : Seized around November 18, 2010, maybe even together with FV DUL-NURAIN. Fish-poacher, now used as piracy launch.
COMORAN FV : Seized on November 18, 2010. The Comoros-flagged fishing vessel with a two man crew was confirmed sea-jacked inside the territorial waters of the Comoros. So far the identity of the vessel has not been released.
MV ALBEDO : Seized on November 26, 2010. The Malaysia-flagged box-ship MV ALBEDO en route from Jebel Ali in the UAE to Mombasa in Kenya was boarded in the early morning hours and an alarm was raised at 03h00 UTC (06h00 LT) in position 05:38N – 068:27E, which is around 255 nm west of the Maldives group of islands. The master had reported to the Malaysian owners already on that fateful Friday that pirates were on-board and his vessel was hijacked. That information was then forwarded to to the navies. However, EU NAVFOR confirmed only 3 days later on mid-Monday that the vessel was captured. Why EU NAVFOR only reported so late is not known, but maybe because a Danish Navy frigate was sailing Saturday to the rescue of the German freighter MCL Bremen, a multi-purpose 130-metre freighter, which was nearby attacked by pirates. But following standard procedures, the whole crew barricaded themselves in a secret room and the attackers later left that vessel before the warship arrived and MLC BREMEN is reportedly sailing free.
The container vessel MV ALBEDO has a crew of 23 sailors. Six hail from Sri Lanka and others from Pakistan, Iran and Bangladesh. Registered owner and manager is MAJESTIC ENRICH SHIPPING SDN. The vessel is held now south of Ceel Gaan at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast off Harardheere.
FV KANTARI 12 : Seized before November 30, 2010. The vessel was used to capture FV LAKMALI and FV LAKMINI 03. Further reports concerning the whereabouts of this vessel awaited.
FV LAKMINI 03 : Seized November 30, 2010. Sri Lankan 40 ft. fishing vessel FV LAKMINI 03 (Reg: IMUL-A-0453-KLT) was captured together with FV LAKMALI taken hostage while in international waters and after they had gone fishing from Beruwala on November 20, 2010. The pirates launched the attack from another commandeered vessel - the FV KANTARI 12.
The crew consists of six Sri Lankans and in addition two abducted fishermen from the earlier release FV LAKMALI: Mr. Lal Fernando and Mr. Sugath Fernando.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry of Sri Lanka has requested their envoys in Nairobi / Kenya to follow up on these sea-jacking cases.
The present location of the vessel is not known.
MV JAHAN MONI : Seized December 05, 2010. The Bangladesh-flagged bulk carrier MV JAHAN MONI was sea-jacked by alleged Somali pirates position 08:12N – 071:55E, which is around 67 nm west of Minicoy Island and the merchant vessel was reported hijacked by six armed pirates and 26 people were taken hostage barely 70 nautical miles off the Indian Lakshadweep Islands. At 09h42 UTC on 05 December NATO reported the merchant vessel was under attack by pirates in 1 skiff in position 08°10N 071°43E. The vessel was attacked twice before being boarded by the heavily armed pirates and in an area, where a multi-ship task force of the Indian Navy was carrying out search operations in the Arabian Sea for pirate mother vessels. EU NAVFOR finally confirmed on 06 December that the bulker was pirated in the Somali Basin, approximately 1300 nautical miles East of Somalia, and only 300 nautical miles from the Indian mainland coast.
Apparently one of the previously sea-jacked fishing vessels was used to launch the attack.
The vessel was en route rom Indonesia with 43,150 tonnes of nickel ore on board to take them to Greece via Singapore.
It is owned by Mohammed Shajahan, owner of leading mild steel producing company KSRM and Bangladeshi shipping company Brave Royal. All people on board - 25 crew and one woman - are reported to be Bangladeshi.
The vessel was commandeered at a speed of 10 nautical miles towards the Somali coast and arrived there on Saturday 10. Dec. 2010 early morning, as was also confirmed by owner Mohammad Shahjahan for the owners and Rahmatullah, technical officer of Brave Royal Shipping Management Limited - the operating firm of the ship, confirmed - though they doesn't have contact yet. Marine superintendent of the company Captain Mohammad Golam Mostafa confirmed that the ship had been anchored at the east coast of Garacad.
Officials of SR Shipping Limited, the owning company of the hijacked ship, and its sister concern Brave Royal Shipping Management Limited held a meeting to chalk out the negotiation with the pirates, if they contact after reaching the shore.
The authorities could not yet contact with any of the crew or pirates. A satellite telephone to the ship on Saturday morning remained unanswered, Mostafa added.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has assured "all-out" support to free the vessel and crew, he said.
A senior Bangladesh Shipping Ministry official said: "Our first priority is to bring back the lady as soon as possible," referring to the wife of the chief engineer.
Mohammed Shahjahan, chairman of Brave Royal Shipping Management Limited that owns the ship, MV Jahan Moni, stated on Sunday, 12. December 2010, that the pirates put him through to the captain, chief engineer and the chief engineer's wife on telephone. They talked twice, at 2:30pm and at 7pm, he said. A serious conflict between two Somali groups, who claimed "ownership" of that vessel, broke out already before the vessel arrived at the Somali coast. It is held now off Dhanane, south of Garacad, at the Northern Somali Indian Ocean coast.
MSC PANAMA : Seized December 10, 2010. At 12h12 UTC (09h12 LT) on 10 December 2010 the U.S.-owned container vessel MSC PANAMA was reported to be under attack by an armed group of in total five sea-shifta in two skiffs on board in position 09°57S 041°46E. A Rocket Propelled Grenade was used during the attack which occurred approximately 80 nautical miles east of the Tanzanian/Mozambique border. On the afternoon of 10 December, the merchant vessel was then confirmed pirated and in position Latitude: 10°00S Longitude: 041°51E.
The boxship was en route from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) to Beira (Mozambique) when the attack occurred.
This southerly attack in the Western Indian Ocean is a further example of the constantly expanding area of pirate activity, triggered by naval activities in the Gulf of Aden and close to the Somali shores and apparently also serving an agenda of implicating more and more regional countries. Apparently one of the the previously sea-jacked fishing vessels was used in the attack.
The 26,288 dwt MCS PANAMA is a Liberian flagged container ship, operated by SHIP MANAGEMENT SERVICES INC from Coral Gables Florida, a US based company fronting for registered owner EURUS BERLIN LLC.
The vessel has a crew of 23 seafarers, who all are from Myanmar/Burma).
"The Somali pirates let the Burmese crewmen call their families three days ago. All said they were in good health and told their families not to worry about them," an official at the Rangoon branch of St. John's Ship Management said on condition of anonymity to Mizzima News.
Although the crewmen were not in mortal danger, they needed to keep their spirits up while being held by the pirates, Htay Aung, a central executive committee member of the junta-supported Myanmar Overseas Seafarers' Association, said.
The release of the MSC Panama and the crewmen would depend on the negotiations between the pirates and the company and such talks normally takes more than two months, Thai-based Seafarers' Union of Burma official Aung Thura told Mizzima. His union has been outlawed by the Burmese ruling military junta.
The vessel arrived in Somalia and is held now south of Ceel Gaan at the Central Somali Indian Ocean coast off Harardheere, close to MV ALBEDO.
MV RENUAR : Seized: December 11, 2010. As ECOTERRA Intl. reported the cargo vessel was captured on 11. December 2010 at around 05h40 UTC in position 06:09N – 067:19E, which is approximately 360nm SW of Minicoy Island, 1,200nm from Mogadishu in Somalia and 550nm off the Indian coast. On 13. November also NATO finally confirmed and stated the vessel was captured at position Latitude: 06°11N Longitude: 067°25E. EU NAVFOR had earlier confirmed our reports on 12. December.
Panama-flagged MV RENUAR is a bulk cargo vessel with a dead-weight of 70,156 tonnes and was en route to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates from Port Louis in Mauritius when it was captured on Saturday, EU NAVFOR confirmed and stated: "The pirates have confirmed that they have control of the ship which is now heading west towards the Somali coast." The EU said it was a Liberian-owned vessel.
But Europe's best ship register states that CANDY ENT INC from Greece is the registered owner and MARYVILLE MARITIME INC from Greece the manager. Though the Greek ship register is notoriously in shambles, it is not known how EU NAVFOR did arrive at the conclusion that the vessel would be Liberian owned.
The pirates launched the attack from 2 skiffs, supported by a mother ship, with fire of small arms and rocket propelled grenades forcing the merchant vessel to stop. The bulker has a 24-man all-Filipino crew, who attempted to evade the pirates for some time, causing the pirates to make several attacks before finally boarding the vessel. One of the pirates had died during the attack - marine observers reported yesterday.
That at present more and more of the previously already captured fast fishing vessels are used to launch far-reaching attacks is widely known and analysts can not understand why these vessels are not tracked better by the navies.
The bulk carrier MV RENUAR (IMO9042221) is at present commandeered to the Somali coast, but naval centres stated that they had at that moment no communications with the ship and that the condition of the crew is not known.
The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines said it was working to ensure the safety of 24 Filipino seafarers on board the Panama-flagged vessel MV Renuar. In a release posted on its website on Monday, the DFA's Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA) said that it has instructed Capt. Gaudencio Collado, Philippine Liaison Officer to the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) in Manama, Bahrain to assist in the rescue efforts and that the European Union Naval Forces (EU NAVFOR) will attempt a rescue before the vessel, now en route to Somalia, reaches Somali waters.
Analysts, however, see such sabre-rattling as rather unfortunate and advised that the DFA should better look into the policy, which once had stopped Filipino seafarers from signing on with ships plying such dangerous routes.
DFA Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr. also instructed Collado to convey to the EU NAVFOR the Philippine Government's "paramount concern" for the safety of the Filipino crew members. The OUMWA likewise called on the Philippine Embassy in Athens to convey the same message to the vessel's Greece-based owner. The crew had locked themselves in a compartment but were later overwhelmed and the pirates are in control of the vessel. The captain contacted a humanitarian organization and reported that the crew is all right. The ship arrived on 20. December south of Garacad at the Northern Somali Indian Ocean coast.
MSV SALIM AMADI : Seized December 15, 2010. The motorized cargo dhow of most likely Indian origin was seized at 10h00 LT (07h00 UTC) some 70nm from Bosaso on her way from Dubai to this harbour town of the regional state of Puntland in Somalia. Number of crew and fate not known.
MV ORNA : Seized December 20, 2010. The UAE-owned, Panama-flagged bulker MV ORNA (IMO 8312162) was in the morning of 20. December 2010 at 08h29LT (11h29 UTC) reported under attack by pirates in position Latitude: 01°46S Longitude: 060°32E.The bulk carrier was under way to India from Durban and is laden with coal.
NATO reported that the attack was launched from 2 attack skiffs, with pirates firing small arms and rocket propelled grenades at the merchant vessel en route in the Indian Ocean, approximately 400 nautical miles North East of the island-state of the Seychelles. The vessel was stopped and boarded by at least 4 pirates.
The bulk carrier was then pirated, EU NAVFOR confirmed later and that the number o f crew on board was unknown.
The crew is co-operating and no damage is reported, the EU statement reads, which also stated that MV ORNA was not registered with the naval centres of MSCHOA or UKMTO.
The MV ORNA is a Panama flagged, UAE owned bulk cargo vessel with a dead weight of 27,915 tonnes.
The vessels safety management certificate had been withdrawn by Nippon Kaiji Kyokai already on 14. October this year and the crew is also not covered by an ITF agreement, but unlike other UAE-owned vessels it has still at least an insurance with Sveriges Angfartys Assurans Forening (Swedish Club). Ship manager SWEDISH MANAGEMENT CO SA in Dubai fronts for registered owner SIRAGO SHIPMANAGEMENT SA.There are 19 sailors on board and the crew comprises of one Sri Lankan and 18 Syrians.
The vessel is at present commandeered towards the Somali coast.
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CLARIFICATION AWAITED:
INDIAN AUTHORITIES REQUESTED TO STOP THIS BLOCKADE-BREAKING SMUGGLER
ALERT: ILLEGALLY OPERATING VESSEL WITH CRIMINAL RECORD IN SOMALI WATERS
Further reports on action awaited from the Governments of India and the United Arab Emirates.
MSV SEA QUEEN, the Indian-owned and registered but UAE flagged motorized merchant Dhow was at first also by naval sources reported as having been captured again outside Kismaayo in Southern Somalia on 23. October 2010. But Mr. Jagdip Ayachi, who operates as the vessel's handler out of the United Arab Emirates and sometimes also poses as the owner of the Dhow maintains that it is not under duress in the moment.
According to reports the charcoal-laden ship had been attacked by two skiffs at 10h11 local time (13h11 UTC) on 23. October 2010 and observers stated that the Indian flagged Dhow SEA QUEEN (MSI Number: 419956127) was loaded with charcoal in position 00.23.13S/42.35.58E, outside Kismaayo, when it was pirated by a gang arriving in 2 skiffs. Thereafter the latest position of MSV SEA QUEEN was at 16:19:36 (UTC) on 23OCT10 at position 00.24.48S/42.38.29E.
The fact that she then was heading from 00.23 to 00.24 South (both positions already south of Kismaayo and with course towards the Kenyan border) could be an indication that they are involved in some other business all-together and that it might not be a sea-jack but a taxi-ride or some other purpose behind it, like weapons- or precious-stones-smuggling, transport of Al-Shabaab fighters to these islands there or similar clandestine and illegal activities.
Since that vessel and crew were taken already in April in a flurry together with other blockade breaking Dhows. which probably also resembled a quarrel or fall-out among certain players, it could very well be something like that this time too. But for the moment we presume that this specific blockade-breaker is doing illegal business together with Somali criminals.
This vessel clearly not only violates the legal regulations of the transitional federal government (TFG) of Somalia, which clearly stipulate that Kismaayo is not a port of entry for foreign flagged vessels and obviously is a crime-ship since it exports illegally charcoal from Somalia, but since it is also fact that the vessel has a registration issued by the Indian Government it violates blatantly and persistently the ban imposed at the beginning of the year on all Indian registered merchant dhows which clearly rules that it is not permitted for any of these vessels to ply the waters south and west of a line joining Salalah (Oman) and Malé (Maldives).
If the Indian government as well as the authorities now still will do nothing to once and for all stop the criminal activities of this vessel MSV SEA QUEEN, it will become obvious that they protect these blockade breakers, smugglers and thieves and thereby aide the dealings of organizations like the Al-Shabaab, which is officially listed as a terrorist group, because without their colluding consent the vessel never could have even entered Kismaayo in the first place.
Kenyan security organs have now been informed about this vessel and the government of the United Arab Emirates was urged again to finally forbid the import of illegal charcoal exports from Somalia, which at least would show that the UAE recognizes the laws of Somalia and assists Somalia in their enforcement.
Boat with five fishermen goes missing in Arabian sea
A fishing boat with five fishermen on board has gone missing in the rough sea, 160 nautical miles from the Okha port of the district, police said on 16. November 2010. A complaint registered with the marine police station of Okha said that contact with the boat that had gone for fishing was lost from Sunday.The sea has been rough for the last few days and the state government had warned fishermen not to venture into the ocean.The police along with Coast Guard has began search for the missing boat and fisherman.
OTHER CASES NOT COMPLETELY CLOSED:
- please see: Status of not yet resolved Maritime Incidences off Somalia
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THIS INFORMATION IS ALSO A WARNING TO VESSELS TRAVERSING THE SOMALI BASIN TO BE AWARE OF LARGER VESSELS BEING USED AS LAUNCHING PAD AND DECOY FOR PIRACY ATTACKS .
All vessels navigating in the Indian Ocean are advised to consider keeping East of 60E when routing North/South and to consider routing East of 60E and South of 10S when proceeding to and from ports in South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya.
The Indian Government has issued a NOTICE on 30th March 2010: All Indian-flagged motorized sailing vessels are - with immediate effect - no longer permitted to ply the waters south and west of a line joining Salalah (Oman) and Malé (Maldives).
NOTIFICATION BY THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT
- Issued by The Directorate General of Shipping, Mumbai.
DIRECTIONS 31. March 2010
The Directorate has issued directions prohibiting the trading of mechanized sailing vessels south and west of the line joining Salalah and Male, with immediate effect.
NON-MARITIME HOSTAGE CASES IN SOMALIA:
Missing:
Briton Murray Watson and Kenyan Patrick Amukhuma are missing since 01. April 2008. They were working on a U.N.-funded project in the Juba valley, were seized by gunmen near Bua'le and taken to Jilib, 280 km (175 miles) south of Mogadishu. Media reports until November 2010 maintained they are still being held and close sources reveal that the case is one of a so far Unsuccessful Resolution with no independent proof of live since a long time. While, based on reports from the ground, it could be assumed that Patrick Amukhuma had died, the meanwhile penniless Kenyan-Somali spouse with 3 children of Mr. Watson appealed as recently as October 2010 again for the release of the British researcher.
Political hostage:
French officer Denis Allex. Somali gunmen kidnapped two French security advisers working for the Somali TFG government from the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu on July 14 2009. Police said one escaped on Aug. 26 after killing three of his captors, but Marc Aubriere denied killing anyone and said he slipped away while his guards slept. A video released by Al Shabab was showing the second officer still being held and political demands for his release were made by Al Shabab. On June 9, 2010 the video appeared on a website often used by Islamist militant groups, which said the hostage, named as Denis Allex, had issued a "message to the French people". The video showed the captive in an orange outfit with armed men standing behind him.
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For 2010 the recorded account around the Horn of Africa stands at 237 incidences with 196 direct attacks by Somali sea-shifta resulting in 71 sea-jackings on the one side and on the other the sinking of one merchant vessel (MV AL-ABI ) by machine-gun fire from the Seychelles's coastguard boat TOPAZ (11 Somalis now jailed for 10 years in the Seychelles) as well as the wrongful attack by the Indian navy on an innocent Yemeni fishing vessel and the sinking of FV SIRICHAI NAVA 11 with many injured sailors and at least five people from the vessel and 8 attackers dead. Sea-jacked MV AL-ASSA - without its original Yemeni crew - was used as pirate vessel and likewise sunk while the Somali captors allegedly were released on land. In addition four Somali fishermen were killed by naval helicopter, which the navies cowardly never identified, at Labad north of Hobyo and one fisherman has killed by AMISOM forces near Mogadishu harbour.
The naval alliances had since August 2008 and until May 2010 apprehended 1090 suspected pirates, detained and kept or transferred for prosecution 480, killed at least 64 and wounded over 24 Somalis. (Actual independent update see: EXCLUSIV - whereby it must be stated that while trying to keep up with the killings and arrests, the deportations of Somalis or cases where they were set out again without supplies to face sure death on the ocean - like the Russians did in at least one case, is due to the in-transparency of the navies extremely difficult and hard to keep track). It must, be noted that most navies have become since the beginning of 2010extremely secretive and do neither report properly to the Somali government nor through their media outlets on the real number of casualties and injuries.
Not well documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (although not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail or like the S/Y Serenity, MV Indian Ocean Explorer were sunk to cover their drug-smuggling activities. Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: RED / IO: RED/ORANGE (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon. Starting from mid February until early April as well as around October every year an increase in piracy cases can be expected. With the onset of the monsoon winds and rough seas piracy cases decline.
If you have any additional information concerning the cases, please send to office[at]ecoterra-international.org - if required we guarantee 100% confidentiality.
For further details and regional information see the Somali Marine and Coastal Monitor and the updated map of the PIRACY COASTS OF SOMALIA. See the archive at www.australia.to and news on www.international.to
EMERGENCY HELPLINE: sms/call +254-719-603-176 / +254-714-747-090
East Africa ILLEGAL FISHING AND DUMPING HOTLINE: +254-714-747-090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: office[at]ecoterra.net
EA Seafarers Assistance Programme : Call: +254-734-437838 or +254-714-747090 or SMS to +254-738-497979
ECOTERRA Intl. is an international nature protection and human rights organization, whose Africa offices in Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania also monitor the marine and maritime situation along the East African Indian Ocean coasts as well as the Gulf of Aden. ECOTERRA is working in Somalia since 1986 and does focus in its work against piracy mainly on coastal development, marine protection and pacification. ECOP-marine is an ECOTERRA group committed to fight against all forms of crime on the waters.
N.B.: This status report is mainly for the next of kin of seafarers held hostage, who often do not get any information from the ship-owners or their governments, and shall serve as well as clearing-house for the media. Unless otherwise stated it is for educational purposes only. Request for further details can be e-mailed to: somalia[at]ecoterra.net (you have to verify your mail). Our reporting without fear or favour is based on integrity and independence.
Witnesses and whistle-blowers with proper information concerning naval operations and atrocities, acts of piracy or other crimes on the seas around the Horn of Africa, hostage case backgrounds and especially concerning illegal fishing and toxic wast dumping or pollution by ships as well as any environmental information, can call our 24h numbers and e-mail confidentially or even anonymously or to office[at]ecoterra-international.org and also can request a PGP key for secure transmission.
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© 2010, Mogadishu. This compilation may be reprinted and republished as long as the content remains unaltered, and ECOTERRA Intl. is cited as source.
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