11 January 2009

Somali Pirates Swimming With the Sharks

From Al-Jazeera English:

The pirates were among eight men whose boat overturned off the coast of Kenya in a storm as they left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff that ended on Friday, a pirate and a relative of one of the dead men said.

"Six of our boys perished at the sea while coming from the released Saudi supertanker," Mohamed Said told the AFP news agency.

"The small boat that was carrying those killed and eight who survived was overloaded and at high speed, we have been told by the survivors.

"They were afraid of a chase from outsiders [foreign naval forces] who invaded Somalia waters," he said.

The group's $300,000 share of the ransom was also lost, he said.
Mmmm, I wonder if they taste like chicken.

Full U.S. Navy photos of the MV Sirius Star available.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Karma can be a beeotch. Couldn't have happened to a better bunch.

subrookie said...

To be frank...F'k them. We should have Sea Cobra's putting 20mm in these guys ass at every opportunity. I say we send some divers to find that Saudi $300K and buy really good booze to celebrate their death.

Anonymous said...

Okay, so maybe I'm pretty thick-skulled and someone needs to explain to me how it is that these...pirates...are able to hijack a huge ship, demand a ransom, sit tight and wait for said ransom to be delivered, and then scoot off in their little boats...without so much as a broken fingernail.

Am I missing something? Or is there just no political will out there - ANYWHERE!? - to scratch this scum off the face of the earth?

I mean, if this is not the stuff of satire, then I'm sure I don't know what is.

Nixon said...

Elizabeth,

At lot of it has to do with international laws. Some of the heavy hitter Navy blogs can spell it out for you (check out Eaglespeak). But it's definitely making navies worldwide look like a floating joke :-\

Anonymous said...

LT,

Okay, so there's international law to consider...but, jeeze...I'm not talking about some unilateral use of cellulose-encased laser-guided missiles or anything, just a little commonsense use of the tools at our disposal in the 21st century!

Thanks for that link - it looks very interesting...I've bookmarked it and will check it out in depth when I have some more spare time.