When Private Interests Combat Piracy
From ThreatsWatch RapidRecon...
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Into this breach leaps American entrepreneurship and straightforward seizing the opportunity.
A Texas based private security firm is now engaged in providing armed security escorts to deal with “open water threats and provide an electronic command center for threat detection and response, leveraging their teams between many vessels across the region.” While the mission was made public a week ago, there is no current indication of deployment or any engagement with pirates.
However, while the United Nations, NATO and the affected nations and shipping lines await decisions to be made, a private company has taken the initiative. Rash actions? It’s hard to tell. Effective actions? We may never know.
New Counter-Piracy Task Force Established
Commander, Combined Maritime Forces Public Affairs
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MANAMA, Bahrain – The Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) has established Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151) specifically for counter-piracy operations.
The establishment of CTF-151 will allow CTF-150 assets to remain focused on those activities, giving CTF-151 the ability to focus solely on the counter-piracy mission.
“Some navies in our coalition did not have the authority to conduct counter-piracy missions,” said Vice Adm, Bill Gortney, CMF Commander. “The establishment of CTF-151 will allow those nations to operate under the auspices of CTF-150, while allowing other nations to join CTF-151 to support our goal of deterring, disrupting and eventually bringing to justice the maritime criminals involved in piracy events.”
Pirate 'washes ashore with cash'
Now this is too rich. When news of this hits the general public, the beaches will indeed be a sight to see ;)
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The body of a
Somali pirate who reportedly drowned soon after receiving a huge ransom has washed ashore with $153,000 in cash, his uncle says.
A relative of the drowned pirate told the BBC the family was now trying to dry out the recovered money.
The pirates' boat capsized when they were hit by rough seas as they were heading back to their homes in central Somalia, the leader of the pirates told AFP.
Not their job, is it? Seems to me if they wanted
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Originally Posted by
120mm
Multiple levels of my consciousness is disgusted that ship's captains are not prepared to defend themselves with 3 inch guns and .50 cals. This "be nice to pirates" game will end in tears, vis-a-vis free passage of the seas, if it keeps up.
to do that, they'd be Navy Officers instead of Merchant officers.
Boils down to dollars; cheaper for ship owners to pay the ransoms than to arm the ships, pay fighting wages to the crews, pay to train the crews -- and take a chance on losing a multi million dollar cargo due to a lucky RPG hit.
Kenyan Government Agrees to Try Pirates Seized by U.S. Forces
DoD News release "adds to the weapons to combat piracy"
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2009 – The Kenyan government has agreed to try pirates captured by the U.S. military, a senior Defense Department official said here today.
The agreement came about earlier this month through a memorandum of understanding signed by U.S. State Department and Kenyan government officials, spokesman Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters. Britain also has a similar agreement with Kenya.
I wonder what force this has in international law if the pirates are captured outside Kenyan territorial waters and/or are preying on ships with other than Kenyan registry and have no passengers/crews that are Kenyan citizens? More fun for international legal beagles to be sure.
Pirates to have day in court?
I know Somali pirates aren't quite the same thing as the Taliban, although I did recently hear the whole to-do with them being compared to an insurgency. Any-hoo, up until now, the big problem has been that the law was unclear on how to prosecute them, and that was at least part of what prevented the gaggle of ships cruising off the coast of Somalia from becoming more "proactive", shall we say, against the pirates. But there may be some progress in that direction. The U.S. and Kenya just signed off on an agreement that will have the Kenyans prosecuting the pirates in their courts. This may be good news. Hopefully.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsM...50S4ZZ20090129
Haven't read it yet, but....
The Pirate Latitudes, by William Langewiesche. Vanity Fair, April 2009.
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When the French luxury cruise ship Le Ponant was captured by a raggedy, hopped-up band of Somali pirates last spring, in the Gulf of Aden, it looked as if the bandits had bitten off more than they could chew. But after a week-long standoff, they got what they had come for—a $2.15 million ransom. Describing the terrifying attack, the ordeal of the ship’s epicurean crew, and the tense negotiations, the author examines the ruthless calculus behind a new age of piracy.
Haven't read it yet, but the author is excellent, and is a knowledgeable source on the subject having covered piracy and shipping in his book The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime.