American captain rescued, pirates killed, U.S. official says
 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa...tes/index.html

(CNN) -- The captain of the Maersk Alabama was freed Sunday after being held captive since Wednesday by pirates off the coast of Somalia, a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

The official said Capt. Richard Phillips is uninjured and in good condition, and that three of the four pirates were killed. The fourth pirate is in custody. Phillips was taken aboard the USS Bainbridge, a nearby naval warship.

Earlier Sunday afternoon Maersk Line Limited, owner of the Maersk Alabama, said the U.S. Navy informed the company that it had sighted Phillips in a lifeboat where pirates are holding him.

Phillips was spotted another time earlier in the day, the Navy said.

A man who answered the door at Phillips' home in Underhill, Vermont, told CNN's Stephanie Elam that the family has known the news for hours. He said details would have to come from Virginia, apparently referring to the home base of Maersk Line Limited, based in Norfolk, which owns the ship.

On Saturday, the FBI launched a criminal investigation into the hijacking of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship by Somali pirates, two law enforcement officials told CNN. The probe will be led by the FBI's New York field office, which is responsible for looking into cases involving U.S. citizens in the African region, the officials said.

The Maersk Alabama reached port in Mombasa, Kenya, on Saturday. Crew members aboard the freed cargo ship described how some of their colleagues attempted to "jump" their pirate captors.

A scuffle ensued and one of the sailors stabbed a pirate in the hand in the battle to retake the container ship, one of the sailors told CNN.

Snippets of information are starting to emerge about how the Alabama's crew managed to retake the ship after it was hijacked by pirates Wednesday about 350 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean.

Crew members smiled broadly as they stood on the ship's deck under the watchful eyes of security teams. Although the crew was kept away from the media, CNN's Stan Grant got close enough to ask crew members what happened after the pirates climbed aboard the ship.

One crew member said he recalled being awakened around 7 a.m. as the hijacking began. View a timeline of the attack and its aftermath »

Some of the crew managed to hide in a secure part of the Alabama as the pirates stormed the ship, the sailor said.

As the sailors described their clash with the pirates, a crew member pointed to one shipmate and said, "This guy is a hero. He and the chief engineer, they took down the pirate. ... He led him down there to the engine room and then they jumped him."

The shipmate added that he stabbed the pirate's hand and tied him up.

"Capt. Phillips is a hero," another crew member shouted from the deck of the freed ship.

Since Phillips was captured Wednesday, the destroyer USS Bainbridge has been in the area of the lifeboat, trying to free him.

An attempt by Phillips to escape from the 28-foot covered lifeboat was thwarted by a pirate, who dove into the Indian Ocean after him. Phillips' captors appear to have tied him up afterward, Pentagon officials said.


The Alabama resumed its course on Thursday for Mombasa, its original destination, carrying food aid and an armed 18-person security detail.

Maersk president and CEO John Reinhart told reporters Saturday that the crew will stay on board in Mombasa while the FBI conducts an investigation.

I'm glas everything turned out for the best.


Is it me, or that every time I see the word "pirate", I think of them in black/white striped shirts, tattered black pants and eye patches? :laugh:

This is just a bad situation. And, I hate to say it, but the relative lawlessness of the countries surrounding these waters makes decisive action like this the only way to deal with it.

The moral is clear:

Don't plunder commercial shipping!

Well, there is that. But, these types of pirates were doing more than that. They were hurting people. Moreover, commercial shipping must be allowed to happen without this kind of risk :shrug: In a sense, it is like the robbing of the stage coaches and the train robberies of the wild west. Where is DWG to film it :mad:

How SEALs Carried Out Their Mission

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 13, 2009; Page A09

The operation to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips involved dozens of Navy SEALs, who parachuted from an aircraft into the scene near dark Saturday, landing in the ocean. The SEALs were part of a group of Special Operations forces involved in the effort, according to military officials.

The SEALs set up operations on the USS Bainbridge, which had been communicating with the four pirates via radio and had used smaller boats to make deliveries of food and water to their lifeboat. Yet the pirates were growing increasingly agitated, the officials said. At one point Saturday, the pirates opened fire on one of the smaller U.S. Navy craft that approached.

As the seas grew rougher, the Bainbridge offered to tow the lifeboat to calmer waters, and the pirates agreed, linking up the lifeboat to the destroyer with a towing cable that left 75 to 80 feet between the two vessels. Phillips at the time was tied up in the lifeboat, having been bound -- and occasionally beaten -- by the pirates ever since he had attempted to escape by jumping into the water on Friday, the officials said.

Meanwhile, one of the pirates, estimated to be between 16 and 20 years old, asked to come aboard the Bainbridge to make a phone call. He had been stabbed in the hand during an altercation with the crew of the Maersk Alabama and needed medical care. "He effectively gave himself up," a senior military official said. The Navy then allowed that pirate to speak with the others in hopes that he could persuade them to give up.

The three other pirates, however, showed signs of growing irritation, as the Bainbridge, 18 miles from shore, towed the lifeboat further out to sea, the senior military official said. "They had no promise of money, clearly no passage. The one ticket they had was the captain," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record.

"In the last discussion, they said, 'If we don't get what we want, we will kill the captain,' " the official said.

Soon afterward, two pirates moved to one of the hatches of the lifeboat and stuck their heads out. The third pirate advanced toward the captain and pointed his AK-47 straight at Phillips's back, the rifle touching it or inches away, the official said.

U.S. military observers thought that Phillips was about to be shot. SEAL snipers, who were positioned on a deck at the stern of the Bainbridge, an area known as the fantail, had the three pirates in their sights. The on-scene commander gave the snipers authority to fire.

"As soon as the snipers had a clear shot at the guy who had the rifle, they shot him and the other two in the hatches," the senior military official said.

A member of the Special Operations team slid down the tow line into the water and climbed aboard the lifeboat. Phillips was then put in a small craft and taken to the Bainbridge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

this is a great way to deal with the planet's thugs & hoodlums. We should do it more often.

Johnny Depp better go back to his day job.

And people thought that Obama was going to be "weak" in dealing with these types.I like the way he kept his mouth shut and went to work quietly and effectively and said nothing until the jobb was done.

The Administration is to be commended for quick, decisive, well-planned surgically precise action.

Let's see more of this type of operation.

Ending Somali piracy: few options for US forces
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer Todd Pitman, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 6 mins ago

NAIROBI, Kenya – Stamping out Somalia's piracy scourge using U.S. warships or military force will be virtually impossible, according to maritime experts who said Tuesday the real problems lie ashore in the ashes of Somalia's failed state.

Fixing those problems could take decades, and the U.S. already tried intervening — 17 years ago in a failed humanitarian mission that ended with helicopters shot down and dead US soldiers dragged through Mogadishu's sand-swept streets.

"It's understandable to find people yelling at their televisions, saying 'shoot them all or stop them,'" Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, managing director of Dryad Maritime Intelligence Service in Britain, said of the pirates. "You have the might of international navies, and you can't end this?"

But sending in more warships is like "sticking a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound," he said. "The fact is, what you see at sea is a manifestation of the problems ashore in Somalia."

The Islamic country of 8 million people disintegrated in 1991 when warlords toppled the president. Since then, it's been ruled by heavily armed rival clans, hit by famine, and suffered relentless outbreaks of street-fighting that turned it into a no-go zone for most foreigners.

The U.S. dispatched troops in 1992 as part of a U.N. relief operation to feed hordes of hungry civilians, but the Americans became entangled in local clan warfare. Months later, militias shot down two helicopters and killed 18 American soldiers in a battle recounted in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."

Images of gunmen dragging the bodies of U.S. soldiers through Mogadishu became an icon for those opposed to U.S. involvement overseas. Then-President Bill Clinton ordered a U.S. withdrawal and promised no troops would be deployed there again unless there was a clear U.S. national interest.

Somalia's anarchy, though, has come back to haunt.

U.S. officials believe al-Qaida has operatives there, and hit at least one suspected terror base in 2007.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday he saw no immediate need to bulk up the military response to piracy on the high seas. On Monday, the day after U.S. Navy snipers shot dead three Somali pirates holding American freighter Capt. Richard Phillips hostage, President Barack Obama vowed that Washington was newly committed to halting "the rise of piracy," though he didn't say how.

It's a battle America is already involved in.

In December, the U.S. pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council, clearing the way for international forces to conduct operations on shore in Somalia against pirate havens. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had said Washington wanted to be sure forces could conduct "hot pursuit" of pirates on land if necessary.

That hasn't happened.

Pirates operate openly in several towns along the coast, but attacking those sanctuaries would be problematic because intelligence is thin and there are almost no easy targets. Gunmen and guns are rampant in Somalia, and pirates like all insurgents easily meld into the civilian population.

"You have to be able to tell the difference between good guys and bad guys, and they all look very similar," Gibbon-Brooks said.

The same holds true on the high seas.

Pirates have begun to capture larger vessels for use as "mother ships," enabling their tiny skiffs to operate hundreds of miles offshore. But while U.S. Defense officials say privately they would like to focus on disabling such ships, it's difficult to distinguish pirates masquerading as fishermen from the real thing.

The international community is desperate to free the dozen or so hijacked ships moored along Somali's coast, waiting for ransoms to be paid. But attacking them would endanger the hundreds of innocents aboard, who are essentially the pirates' human shields.

Gibbon-Brooks said each ship had an average of 25 kidnapped crew aboard and perhaps 30 pirates.

Most nations and ship owners have been reticent to use military options because they fear civilian casualties and damage to precious cargo. Beyond that, pirates have rarely harmed hostages.

While America's own rescue turned out well Sunday, a similar French-led rescue Friday left one French citizen dead. And in November, the Indian navy sunk a Thai-owned fishing trawler after coming under fire, killing 15 of the 16 sailors aboard.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing the U.S. and its allies is the sheer size of the seas around the Gulf of Aden and Somalia's 1,900-mile coastline, the longest in Africa. It's impossible for ships to be everywhere at once, and they can only guard a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of vessels that transit the region annually.

In October, NATO sent a seven-ship naval force to the Gulf of Aden, and the European Union sent its own flotilla.

The coalition has had some success: two military helicopters drove off pirates who had boarded a Chinese cargo ship as the crew hid behind locked doors. Indian sailors captured 23 pirates who had been threatening a merchant vessel and handed them over to Yemen for prosecution.

But pirates countered by increasing operations outside the Gulf of Aden.

"They're expanding," said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur. They're "getting bolder and more desperate to get ships."

On Tuesday, pirates nabbed a Greek-managed ship with 22 Filipino seamen aboard in the Gulf of Aden, with another group of pirates in speedboats taking a Lebanese-owned cargo ship off Somalia's eastern coast.

The incidents brought the total number of reported attacks this year alone to least 78. Pirates now hold at least 17 ships and 300 crew.

While there have been calls for companies to place armed guards on vessels, most experts believe that would only escalate conflict and spark firefights. Gibbon-Brooks said pirates typically fired across bows to stop vessels and so far have not intentionally targeted crew.

"For many people it's a mystery why we let pirates get away with it. But everyone usually comes home unharmed," Gibbon-Brooks said. "The point is, life is precious, it makes no sense to hazard it."

Analysts say sailors best options may be those already have: evasive maneuvers, swamping pirate skiffs with wake, forcing them back with fire hoses. Some have suggested traveling in sea convoys.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090414/...cy_few_options

If I were piloting my vessel through those waters, I'd shoot first & ask questions later.

They fired RPG's into the latest US ship that they tried to hijack. Once again, the ship was loaded with food (humanitarian aid) bound for Africa.
I'm thinking that the coalition of forces that is in the Gulf of Aden should just start to take out any pirate ship it comes acorss.