Thursday - February 17, 2011

half good news

2/16/2011 - Boarding teams from the British Navy frigate HMS Cornwall rescued five Yemeni fishermen and captured 17 Somali pirates last week during a rescue operation the Gulf of Aden, the Royal Navy confirmed Tuesday. The hostages were the original crew of a fishing dhow who had been held hostage aboard their Yemeni-flagged vessel for 92 days, the Royal Navy said in a statement.

Since taking the dhow on November 11, 2010, the pirates used it as a “mother ship” for raiding operations, equipping three skiffs with powerful outboard motors, ladders and other paraphernalia, according to the statement.

The rescue operation was carried out Thursday by boarding teams from the Cornwall, supported by Lynx helicopters, according to the statement. The frigate had received a distress call from a South Korean merchant vessel in the area, whose crew had become suspicious of the dhow’s actions.

After rescuing the fishing crew and apprehending their captors, the Cornwall restored the vessel to its rightful Yemeni owners, the Royal Navy said.

The group of about half a dozen sailors and Royal Marines, dispatched from a British warship that is part of an anti-piracy mission in the region, found and destroyed several weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades.

Boo! Hiss!

The pirate vessel, a dhow, was returned to the rescued Yemeni crew, who were able to make their way home, while the 17 pirates were taken aboard HMS Cornwall and deposited in Somalia, where they were released. Under international law, Britain does not have the jurisdiction to arrest suspected pirates unless attacked.

Brits must be loosing their Viking heritage. Here’s how the modern jarls do it:

2/13/2011 - NATO says that a Danish warship has freed a hijacked fishing vessel and arrested 16 suspected Somali pirates.

Sunday’s press release says the HDMS Esbern Snare stopped a suspicious vessel with two skiffs on deck. The warship fired warning shots and sent a boarding party to the hijacked Yemeni vessel.

NATO says there were 16 suspected pirates and two Yemeni hostages on board. The original fishing crew of nine people had been held for a year but most of them had been released.

Better, but not best. Here’s a real Viking, and of course he’s an embarrassment to the Norwegian authorities:

OSLO, Norway — A Norwegian shipping magnate was strongly criticized Wednesday for suggesting that pirates captured off the Horn of Africa should be sunk with their skiffs or executed on the spot.

“When (piracy) implies a great risk of being caught and hanged, and the cost of losing ships and weapons becomes too big, it will decrease and eventually disappear,” Jacob Stolt-Nielsen said in an op-ed in Norwegian financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.

The 79-year-old is the founder of Stolt-Nielsen Ltd, one of Norway’s biggest shipping companies. He stepped down as chairman two years ago but still serves on the board.

“Pirates captured in international waters have always been punished by death, often on the spot,” Stolt-Nielsen wrote Tuesday, arguing that modern navies should deal with the problem like Roman pirate hunter Pompey did more than 2,000 years ago.” “Not arrest them and say, ‘naughty, naughty, shame on you,’ and release them again, but sink their boats with all hands,” he wrote. “The pirates won’t be frightened by being placed before a civilian court.”

The article drew sharp criticism in Norway, a seafaring nation known as a peace broker in many of the world’s armed conflicts and as the home of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jacqueline Smith, president of the Norwegian Seafarers Union, described Stolt-Nielsen’s views as “barbaric” and said killing pirates could endanger the 700 seafarers now held as hostages in Somalia.

Bloody Socialists. Of course they’re barbaric! You meet fire with fire, or else you get burned. What are you going to do, send down a longship full of Vikings and threaten to clog dance at the pirates unless they go home?

“Perhaps I was a bit tough in the commentary, but I’m just telling it like it is,” Stolt-Nielsen told DN, “The way to solve the pirate problem is to sink the pirates and their ships.”

“The only way to fight piracy is to hang the pirates,” he said. “The only language they understand is force.”

Somali pirate researcher Mohamed Husein Gaas warns of possible reprisals on Norwegian crews and ships in the wake of Jacob Stolt-Nielsen’s uncompromising remarks.

His statements were not well received by the Somali community in Norway, according to the paper. Mohamed Husein Gaas believes Mr. Stolt-Nielsen’s idea will make pirates deliberately target Norwegian ships and sailors.

“Pirates are very vindictive. Rumors spread really fast, and all the locals down there digest Norwegian and international news”, he tells DN.

He also believes killing the pirates would not solve the problem, because they do not care about being killed.

“They are not rational. Local Somalis live daily with the fear of dying anyway.”

Shirdon Abdikarim, general manager of the Somali Resource and Rehabilitation Centre in Oslo is also concerned about the consequences of the shipping magnate’s remarks.

He knows they are familiar with the various shipping companies’ designs and flags, enabling them to distinguish the vessels from several hundred meters.

“The statement puts the Norwegian, and other sailors and hostages in great danger”.

Pussies. Muzzie sell-outs. “Researcher” Yeah, he researches what times the ships sail and tells the damn pirates. He’s an enabler, guaranteed. And an apologist.

BTW, WTF does effin’ OSLO have a damn “Somali Resource and Rehabilitation Centre” in the first place. Wouldn’t getting the hell out of Somalia all the way to lovely Norway be rehabilitation enough?

Posted by Drew458     on 02/17/2011 at 10:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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