Free Republic

Nearly a dozen pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machineguns and grappling hooks have been seized in the Gulf of Aden, after being intercepted by a Royal Navy warship. Two skiffs had been detected by the radar on board HMS Portland, a Type 23 frigate, which was originally designed for anti-submarine warfare. Suspecting that they were “not innocent fishing vessels”, the frigate, commanded by Commander Tim Henry, steamed closer to the skiffs and saw that both vessels were filled with weaponry and ammunition. The ship’s Lynx helicopter was sent to hover over the skiffs while teams of Royal Marine and navy...

The Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to European military intelligence. Pirate groups have "well-placed informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based "consultants" help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and courses. In at least one case the pirates have remained in contact with their London informants from the hijacked ship, according to one targeted shipping company. The pirates' information network extends to...

Naturally, any sane person would, instinctively, wish to spare these Somali creatures the terror of enduring a fair, UN/Amnesty/Greenpeace/Muslim Brotherhood/New York Times supervized trial and simply put them out of their misery by a Swedish Bofors Defence 57-mm Mk 110 Naval Gun while being caught red-handed in the act. But this is not how we do things in a Swedish style. Let's see what happens if we Westerners send them off to Kenya, a nation that, just like Sweden, is eager to find out more about the connections between Somali piracy and Islamofascism. I support Kenya, Ethiopia and any other...

AN Australian Navy warship and RAAF spy planes will join the fight against Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. The Gulf-based Anzac Class frigate HMAS Warramunga and P3-C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, now working on Operation Slipper, will be re-tasked and available for anti-piracy duties in and near the Gulf of Aden. They will join the US-led multi-national Combined Task Force 151 for short-term counter-piracy missions against the criminals who launched more than 100 attacks on merchant ships during 2008, The Daily Telegraph reports. The pirates also collected more than $150 million in ransom from desperate ship owners. The...

Driving a luxury 4x4 car and smoking imported cigarettes with an expensive satellite phone at his side, Mohamed Said fears his flashy lifestyle as a Somali pirate could be about to come to an end. The 35-year-old has no regrets about joining one of the gangs operating out of the pirate lair of Eyl, a former fishing village that overlooks the Indian Ocean and the strategic shipping lanes linking Europe to Asia through the Gulf of Aden. Their attacks have driven up insurance costs and delayed U.N. aid deliveries. But Said's career has brought him riches he could never have...

Swedish naval personnel arrested seven pirates in the Gulf of Aden in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to a statement from the Swedish Armed Forces. The pirates were apprehended by staff from the HMS Malmö as they attempted to board a Greek cargo vessel halfway between Yemen and Somalia. HMS Malmö was ordered to respond to a distress signal sent out shortly before 1.30am by the M/V Antonis. The cargo ship's crew said they had come under rocket-proppeled grenade fire from two boats manned by pirates. When the Swedish crew arrived at the scene the pirates were attempting...

SNIPPET: "South Korea's naval unit operating off the coast of Somalia has been placed on high alert over Somali pirates' possible attacks using U.S. surface-to-air guided missiles against its helicopter, according to intelligence and Navy sources Monday. The National Intelligence Service and the Defense Security Command recently provided the classified information to the Cheonghae Unit that Somali pirates seemed to have acquired ``Stinger'' missiles from al-Qaeda, said the sources." SNIPPET: "The unit reported the potential threat missiles to the Navy command here and requested data on the weapon, the source said. A military spokesman in Seoul said there was no...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard will require U.S.-flagged ships sailing around the Horn of Africa to post guards and ship owners to submit anti-piracy security plans for approval, a Coast Guard official said on Tuesday. The new requirements, which respond to a surge of piracy off the coast of Somalia, allow ship owners to decide whether to use armed or unarmed guards, Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson told shipping industry representatives at a maritime security meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The revised Maritime Security Directive, highly anticipated by the shipping industry, was signed on Monday...

Russian courts may prosecute Somali pirates for attacks on Russian ships, a senior legal official was quoted as saying in a newspaper due for publication on Wednesday. The comments from Russia's deputy prosecutor general follow efforts by Russia and other countries to find a legal mechanism to prosecute pirates operating off the East African coast, who have become increasingly bold over the past year. In 2008 there were 293 incidents of piracy against ships worldwide -- 11 percent up on the year before. Attacks off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden almost trebled. "The transfer of such individuals into...

The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station. The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone. It says that pirate groups have "well-placed informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based "consultants" help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and...

Somali pirates said on Sunday they had received a $2-million (1.3-million pound) ransom for the release of a British-owned vessel and its 16 Bulgarian crew. Pirate attacks, fuelled by large ransoms, have continued almost unabated despite the presence of an armada of foreign warships patrolling the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. "We got a $2 million ransom for the release of the British-owned ship," pirate Mohamed Saleh, from the Somali coastal village of Eyl, told Reuters on Sunday. "A helicopter brought the money."

President Barack Obama met Saturday with a US cargo ship captain who was held hostage by Somali pirates last month before a dramatic high-seas rescue by US Navy snipers. Obama hosted Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips and his wife, Andrea, in the Oval Office for a visit that had not been publicly announced by the White House. Phillips was also due to attend Saturday's White House Correspondents Association dinner, an annual meet of Washington's press corps elite, politicians and celebrities. Obama is set to host the event.

The U.S. cargo ship captain and a crew member who were taken hostage by Somali pirates have been honored at New York's City Hall by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The mayor presented keys to the city to crew member William Rios and Capt. Richard Phillips and joked about Friday's baseball game at the New York Mets' Citi Field. The mayor says he was going to give the men tickets to the game but decided against it because the Mets are playing the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The fate of seven suspected Somali pirates who were captured by a Spanish warship is uncertain after Spanish prosecutors reversed plans to bring them to Spain to face trial. A Spanish judge, Fernando Andreu, ordered the Somali men released on Friday. However, he refused the prosecution's request to surrender them to Kenyan authorities, saying it would violate the law, since proceedings were already taking place in Spain. A Spanish ship seized the men off the coast of Somalia Wednesday after their boat capsized during their alleged attempt to hijack a Panamanian-flagged vessel. France is prosecuting 15 piracy suspects in its...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.S. Navy says an American warship that recently served as a prison for captured pirates has evaded an attack off the Somali coast by two boats that pursued the vessel for over an hour and fired light weapons.

MANAMA (Reuters) - Pirates have fired small arms weapons at a U.S. Navy supply ship off the coast of Eastern Somalia, the first attack of this kind since last year's surge in pirate attacks, the U.S. Navy said on Thursday. The USNS Lewis and Clark was chased for about an hour on Wednesday morning by two pirates skiffs, but neither came closer than about one nautical mile to the U.S. vessel, the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said in a statement. The small arms fire fell well short of the U.S. ship which speeded up to evade the skiffs. The USNS...

Suspected pirates failed in an effort to attack a U.S. Navy ship off the eastern coast of Somalia. the Navy said Thursday. Two skiffs, assumed to be pirate vessels, chased the Lewis and Clark, a dry cargo and ammunition ship supporting the Navy's Fifth Fleet, for more than an hour Wednesday before giving up, CNN reported. During the pursuit, the skiffs fired small arms at the Lewis and Clark and got within one nautical mile before the ship used evasive maneuvers and pulled out of range.

Background Joe Miller at Annenberg FactCheck says he was told by the Pentagon that the USS Bainbridge arrived at the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama on Friday February 10th and that authorization to send in the first SEAL team came at 8:00PM that night, rebutting a purported word-of-sailor report of a 36 hour delay. But news reports on the 9th said that the Bainbridge actually arrived before dawn local time on THURSDAY. Since 8:00 P.M. Friday was 4:00AM Saturday in Somalia, that would make the actual delay, local time to local time, about 48 hours. Bill Gertz at the Washington...

Somali pirates on Sunday said they hijacked a Pakistan-owned ship even as France and the Seychelles nabbed 14 more suspects in the intensifying international hunt for high-seas bandits. The MV Al-Misan was captured on Friday around 100 kilometres off the capital Mogadishu, said Ahmed Abdi, a pirate commander in the coastal village of Harardhere. According to elders and traders in the region, the vessel was transporting vehicles and commodities such as sugar and cooking oil for Somali traders and had sailed from the United Arab Emirates. Release: “One of the two ships we hijacked ... is confirmed to have been...

From a distance the large ship on the horizon looked like the perfect target, ripe for a successful spot of piracy. But as the Somali pirates sped toward the vessel sailing near the Seychelles, they were horrified to see two boats and a helicopter set off from their target and launch their own counter-attack. They had failed to spot, in the dazzling sun, that the 'merchant ship' they thought they were intercepting was, in fact, a French naval ship bristling with cannons, radar technology and armed commandos. When the three pirate boats were spotted heading toward them the frigate Nivose,...