'Experts' lead Saudi tanker talks

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Negotiations between Somali pirates and the owners of a captured Saudi tanker are being conducted by a multinational specialist firm, the BBC has learnt.

A reported figure of $25m (£17m) for the MV Sirius Star was denied by the company, which specialises in kidnap and ransom talks, shipping sources say.

Shipping industry experts expect the ransom for the tanker, its 25 crew, and $100m cargo of oil to be much higher.

Regional leaders at crisis talks have appealed for international help.

Senior officials from countries bordering the Red Sea, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, met in Cairo and called for political, humanitarian and economic help from the international community.

Egypt's Deputy Foreign Minister, Wafaa Bassem, said Somalia had to be helped by the international community to stop it becoming a "magnet for pirates".

'World only cares about pirates' Press calls for collective action on pirates IMB piracy map The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

The captured tanker and its crew, which includes two Britons, are being held near the Somali port of Harardhere.

The BBC's Frank Gardner says the crew are believed to be being well treated while intensive discussions are being held by their captors over how best to proceed.

He says the Somali pirates are said to be stunned at the huge size of their catch and some want it to be treated as being worth the same as 10 ships.

Others, he says, are arguing for a quick deal at a reasonable price, aware that they may already be attracting unwanted attention from warships patrolling the area.

In a rare victory against the organised gangs, the Indian navy earlier said it had sunk a suspected pirate "mother ship" after it failed to stop for an inspection in the Gulf of Aden, several hundred kilometres north of the location where the hijackers boarded the Sirius Star.

Escort plea

Correspondents say the pirates who seized the Sirius Star on Saturday are a sophisticated group with contacts in Dubai and neighbouring countries.

Money from previous hijackings has been used to buy new boats and weapons as well as develop a network across the Horn of Africa.

On board a Nato warship heading towards Somalia

Shipping companies are now weighing up the risks of using the short-cut route to and from Europe via the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal.

However, travelling around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope would add several weeks to average journey times and substantially increase the cost of goods for consumers.

Maersk, one of the world's biggest shipping firms, announced on Thursday that some of its fleet, mainly tankers, would no longer use the Gulf of Aden unless there were more naval escorted convoys.

BBC Africa editor Martin Plaut says there is currently no formal system of convoys in the area.

Indian and Russian ships are working independently in the region, while Nato and the US Navy are working together, advising merchant ships that they are in the area and can protect them.

Other warships are escorting World Food Programme ships carrying aid destined for Somalia, and merchant ships can travel with them as long as they do not slow them down.

A naval taskforce is due to be sent by the EU in December.

Pirates Exploit Confusion About International Law

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On Saturday, off the coast of East Africa, pirates seized their largest catch ever: a giant Saudi-owned oil tanker called the Sirius Star. The brazen attack came on the heels of the capture of a Ukrainian vessel (loaded with armaments destined for Kenya) by Somali pirates in September. Humanitarian food shipments into Somalia have had naval escort for nearly a year -- evidence of how much the security of sea-lanes has eroded. Media reports suggest that Somali pirates have already attacked more than 80 ships in 2008.

These are unprecedented and dangerous developments. Suppressing piracy and the slave trade, accomplished by the last quarter of the 19th century, were among mankind's great civilizing achievements. These were brought about by major maritime powers such as Great Britain and the United States. Indeed, in the American republic's earliest days, President Jefferson dispatched the infant U.S. Navy to confront the Barbary pirates, both on shore and at sea.

By the 1970s, as a part of a growing chaos in parts of Africa and Asia, incidents of piracy began to pick up. But it was not until the 21st century that piracy has experienced a meteoric rise, with the number of attacks increasing by double-digit rates per year. Last year, according to the International Maritime Bureau, 263 actual and attempted pirate attacks took place. Large maritime areas have now become known as pirate heavens, where mariners can expect to be routinely molested. The Victorian self-confidence that drove pirates from the seas is gone.

Twenty-first century economics being what they are, the pirates have been more interested in the payment of ransom by anxious owners and insurers than in the vessels or their cargoes. Piracy is nonetheless a vicious and violent activity that exposes the world's merchant mariners to additional risk of death or injury. Even more fundamentally, the dramatic surge in piracy is, like terrorism, part of a broad challenge to civilization and international order.

Experience -- especially that of colonial America -- suggests that a few sporadic antipirate efforts will not be enough to solve the problem. Only a dedicated naval campaign, along with a determined effort to close the pirates' safe havens, will succeed in sending piracy back to the history books.

There has been some progress on this front. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has dispatched a formidable multinational force -- including British, Italian and Greek ships -- to join the American, French, Canadian and Danish vessels already cruising off Somalia's vast coastline. France has also aggressively pursued pirates, freeing captured vessels and hostages.

Capturing pirates is not the critical problem. Rather, the issue is how to handle those in captivity. Traditionally, pirates fell within that category of illegitimate hostiles that once included slave traders, brigands on the roads and, in wartime, unprivileged or "unlawful" enemy combatants. As Judge Nicholas Trott, presiding over a pirate trial, explained in 1718: "It is lawful for any one that takes them, if they cannot with safety to themselves bring them under some government to be tried, to put them to death." This law, of course, has changed since the 18th century. Pirates, brigands and unlawful combatants must now be tried before they can be punished.

One solution would be for the capturing state to press charges based on the much misunderstood and abused principle of "universal" jurisdiction. This is the notion that any state may criminalize and punish conduct that violates certain accepted international-law norms. Although its application in most circumstances is dubious -- there is very little actual state practice supporting the right of one state to punish the nationals of a second for offenses against the citizens of a third -- piracy is one area where a strong case for universal jurisdiction can be made (if only because piratical activities often take place on the high seas, beyond any state's territorial jurisdiction).

Moreover, given the nature of naval operations, discerning who is a pirate is usually a much easier task than separating Taliban and al Qaeda members from innocent bystanders. This fact, all things being equal, should make the task of prosecuting captured pirates an easier process, both from a legal and public-relations perspective.

The key problem is that America's NATO allies have effectively abandoned the historical legal rules permitting irregular fighters to be tried in special military courts (or, in the case of pirates, admiralty courts) in favor of a straightforward criminal-justice model. Although piracy is certainly a criminal offense, treating it like bank robbery or an ordinary murder case presents certain problems for Western states.

To begin with, common criminals cannot be targeted with military force. There are other issues as well. Last April the British Foreign Office reportedly warned the Royal Navy not to detain pirates, since this might violate their "human rights" and could even lead to claims of asylum in Britain. Turning the captives over to Somali authorities is also problematic -- since they might face the head- and hand-chopping rigors of Shariah law. Similar considerations have confounded U.S. government officials in their discussions of how to confront this new problem of an old terror at sea.

In the last few years, France determined to return its pirate prisoners to Somalia based on assurances of humanitarian treatment. The U.S. has, of course, rendered terror prisoners to foreign governments based on similar assurances, and only time will tell whether they are genuine. An equally important question is whether the transfer of captured pirates to local authorities will result in prosecution at all. In many areas, local governments may be subject to corruption or intimidation by strong pirate gangs.

One thing is certain: As in the war on terror, the new campaign against piracy will test the mettle of Western governments. It will also require them to balance the rights of lawbreakers against the indisputable rights of the law-abiding to not live their lives in danger and fear.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey are Washington, D.C., lawyers who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Can there be International Law?

How can one enforce international law on the water? Or worse yet in law-less Somalia? The answer is not guards and safe passage ways, the answer is an international law which would give the pirates some type of discipline and punishment (Foucault) Currently there is no risk to pirating. Even if captured, which is highly unlikely, the two pirate attempts thwarted last week by the Indian navy did not capture the pirates, there is no standard to punishment.

But can there be international law? I don't believe so. Where would one extradite the captured pirates? to the nation who caught the pirates, to the nation of the flagged ship (not that that has any relevance to the ship at all) to the home country of the owners of the ship? Who punishes? Can we have an international tribunal? That would be the most effective measure, but that in and of itself is its own horror show.

There is also the problem of labelling. What exactly is a pirate attack? The UNCOLS has a stated definition.

1. “any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed

   1. On the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft.

   2. Against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction or any State

2. Any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft.

3. Any act inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in sub-paragraphs a or b.

(Article 101: United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Seas 1982)

This is a very clear definition, but the problem here is that certain acts can be labeled differently and will not come under the definition of piracy. Is the recent Sirius Star attack piracy or terrorism? Do the pirates have other ends for Sirius Star than just money? Couldn't that ship be used for terrorism? Are the Somali pirates doing this for private ends? Is it not a 'social movement' against the lack of regulation of fishing? Some pirates are using their gains to help the local infrastructure and schools, is that still piracy? Such a strict definition is problematic for many reasons.

The Achille Lauro case is an excellent case of why this definition has been problematic in the efforts against piracy, particularly because of the “official definition” of what a pirate attack is. In October of 1985, the Achille Lauro, a passenger liner, set sail from the port of Alexandria to Port Said in Egypt. Four men in connection with the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the ship and held the passengers and the crew hostage with intention to conduct a terrorist attack in the port of Ashdod. (Snoddon 2007)When the potential attack was thwarted, the hijackers/ pirates/ terrorists, executed a Jewish- American wheelchair bound passenger Leon Klinghoffer and threw his body off the ship. (Achille Lauro 2008) The Egyptian government negotiated with the hijackers and the ship returned to Port Said. The Egyptian government then offered safe passage to the hijackers with a flight out of the county but the flight was intercepted by a U.S. Navy aircraft and the flight was forced to land at a NATO base in Italy. Once in Italy, the Italian government refused to extradite the criminal to the United States. The act of hijacking the ship and killing a passenger was not labeled as piracy because the ends of the attack were for political purposes; therefore the international courts had no jurisdiction. (Gottschalk 2000)

The labeling of the attack on the Achille Lauro defined the jurisdiction of the case and changed the potential outcome of the case. Although the four hijackers were tried in Italy, Abu Abbas, the founder and leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, left the jurisdiction of Italy and was tried in absentia, but was not captured until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (Achille Lauro 2008) Had the international legal community been able to label the incident as piracy, as the United States did, the United States would have been able to arrest the pirates under 18USC, sub. Sec. 1651 “Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life” (Section 1651. Piracy under law of nations 2004)

Pirates seize Saudi supertanker

An undated photo of the Sirius Star tanker. (Newsis; Daewoo shipping yards via AP)

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By Robert F. Worth and Mark Mcdonald
Published: November 18, 2008

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia: A hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker carrying more than $100 million worth of crude oil is approaching Somali waters where it is expected to anchor so that negotiations can begin on the release of the vessel and its 25 crew, United States navy officials said Tuesday.

The vessel, the 1,080-foot Sirius Star, is the largest ship ever seized by pirates — about the size of an aircraft carrier — and was captured off the coast of Kenya.

"At this time we believe the ship is just off the Somali coast," said Commander Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, stationed in Bahrain. "We don't have a specific indication that the ship is at anchor, but if it follows the pattern of previous attacks, that's what will happen and negotiations will begin between the pirates and the owners of ship."

Although the supertanker's exact location near the Somali coast is not clear, in the past most pirates have brought hijacked vessels to a stretch of coastline between Eyl in the north to the Harradera region to the south, Campbell said in a telephone interview.

The hijacking follows a string of increasingly brazen attacks by Somali pirates in recent months, but this appeared to be the first time that pirates have seized a loaded oil tanker.

Asked about a possible naval intervention, Campbell said: "Once the attack takes place, this is a hostage situation, and there are 25 crew members on board that ship. As with any hostage situation, there has to be concern for those individuals." Negotiations with pirates have often taken weeks or even months. A Ukrainian vessel hijacked in September, loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons, is still being held at Hobyo on the Somali coast, where the ship's crew remain captives, Campbell said.

The International Maritime Bureau, the global clearinghouse for piracy reporting, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has seen a sharp increase in maritime piracy this year.

Noel Choong, head of the piracy reporting center at the bureau, said Tuesday that 88 ships have been attacked in the Gulf of Aden alone this year. And 14 hijacked ships remain in the gulf — the heavily armed hijackers still on board, with the crews, cargo and the vessels themselves being held for ransom.

"They're still at sea and still negotiating," he said, noting that as ransom payoffs have risen, pirates have raised their demands. "They know the going rate."

Only a few years ago, the average ransom was in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now payments can range from $500,000 to $2 million.

The pirates' profits are set to reach a record $50 million in 2008, Somali officials say. Shipping firms are usually prepared to pay, because the sums are low compared with the value of the ships.

The attack on the Sirius Star took place despite an increased multinational naval presence off the Somali coast, where most of the recent hijackings have taken place. The pirates, often armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, travel in speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment.

The supertanker was hijacked more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, navy officials said. That is far to the south of most recent attacks, suggesting that the pirates may be expanding their range in an effort to avoid the multinational naval patrols now plying the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

"I'm stunned by the range of it," said Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference in Washington. The ship's distance from the coast was "the longest distance I've seen for any of these incidents," he said.

The vessel was headed for the United States when it was seized, Reuters reported.

Maritime experts recently have noticed a new development in the gulf — the pirates' use of "mother ships," large oceangoing trawlers carrying fleets of speedboats that are then deployed when a new prize is encountered.

"They launch these boats and they're like wild dogs," said Choong in Kuala Lumpur. "They attack the ship from the port, from starboard, from all points, shooting, scaring the captain, firing RPGs and forcing the ship to stop."

There are some countermeasures the merchant ships can use when approaching pirates are spotted. Fire-retardant foam or huge blasts of water can be sprayed from the ship to douse the would-be hijackers.

Once pirates get aboard, however, the ship is theirs, because crews on commercial vessels are rarely armed, according to Choong and other maritime experts. "They are not mentally or physically fit enough to handle weapons," he said.

Nor do many ship owners use armed contractors — seagoing mercenaries — to fight or ward off approaching pirates. Experts said crew safety and insurance liability were overriding concerns of captains and owners.

"We do not advocate this, having armed escorts on board," said Lee Yin Mui, assistant director of research at the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships at Sea. Known as ReCAAP, the 16-nation network is based in Singapore.

"Armed escorts could only escalate the situation," she said, "and perhaps trigger off heavy crossfire."

The Sirius Star is owned by Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco. Its 25-member crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland, and Saudi Arabia, the United States Navy said.

Robert F. Worth reported from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, Mark McDonald reported from Hong Kong and Alan Cowell contributed from Paris

Pirates Anchor Supertanker off Somalia

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NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- A hijacked supertanker carrying up to $100 million worth of crude oil -- the largest vessel seized to date in an escalating regional piracy crisis -- was believed to have anchored off Somalia Tuesday, its operator said.

An undated photo of the Sirius Star in South Korean waters.

The Sirius Star's crew of 25, including British, Croatian, Polish, Filipino and Saudi nationals, are reported to be safe, according to Dubai-based Vela International Marine.

"Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew," said Vela President Salah Kaaki. "We are in communication with their families and are working toward their safe and speedy return."

The Saudi-owned vessel was seized on Saturday more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya in what Saudi Arabia's foreign minister called "an outrageous act."

The incident is the latest in a series of major acts of piracy around the Gulf of Aden that have cost the international shipping industry millions of dollars and threatened a key global trade route.

The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet said it was not expecting to send ships to intercept the tanker. NATO also said it would not divert any of three ships currently in the Gulf of Aden, The Associated Press reported. Watch how attack may point to expansion in piracy in region »

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, speaking during a visit to Athens, condemned the hijacking, saying: "piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together," according to AP.

U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet Cmdr. Jane Campbell said the tanker -- flagged in Liberia and owned by the Saudi Aramco company -- weighed more than 300,000 metric tons and was more than three times the size of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

A multinational naval force including vessels from the U.S., the UK and Russia has been patrolling the Indian Ocean waters seas near the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, following a sharp increase in pirate attacks in the region.

The burgeoning piracy crisis has flourished in lawless Somalia where almost two decades without a central government has left a country wracked by conflict, chaos and poverty.

"It was attacked more than 450 nautical offshore of Mombasa. This means that the pirates are now operating in an area of over 1.1 million square miles. This is a measure of the determination of the pirates and ... a measure of how lucrative piracy could become," Campbell said.

Campbell said the Navy does not expect to dispatch a vessel to aide the super tanker because it does not have dangerous weapons aboard like the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship loaded with arms that was seized by pirates on September 25.

Oil industry insiders say a tanker of the Sirius Star's size can carry up to 2 million barrels of oil, and the ship's operator says it is fully laden.

South Korean officials said on Sunday that armed gunmen hijacked a Japanese freighter and its 23-member crew off the coast of Somalia. The hijacking came as the Korean government was considering sending a warship to join those of other countries to combat piracy in the area.

A Russian patrol ship also thwarted an attack on a Saudi vessel.

Eleven vessels are currently being held by pirates hoping to secure ransoms for their release, according to AP. They include the MV Faina, which was hijacked along with 20 crew and a cargo of weapons and T-72 tanks.

Ninety percent of ships in the area are using a guarded corridor and there had been no hijackings inside the zone since it was set up on August 22, Danish Commodore Per Bigum Christensen told AP last week.

Around 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels pass along the crucial shipping route each year.

Meanwhile, a Norwegian shipping firm has ordered its vessels to avoid the waters off the Horn of Africa and criticized governments for failing to curb the wave of piracy.

The decision by the maritime company Odfjell SE means its 90-plus ships will take the additional time and expense to sail around the southern tip of Africa instead of going through the Suez Canal, a shortcut for mariners for nearly a century and a half.

Pirates seize Saudi tanker off African coast: US

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1 hour ago

DUBAI (AFP) — Pirates on Monday attacked and took control of the Saudi-owned very large crude carrier Sirius Star off the east coast of Africa, a spokesman for the US Navy 5th fleet said.

"The vessel is under the pirates' control," the spokesman told AFP following a statement saying that the tanker, which is owned by Saudi Aramco, came under attack more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya.

The ship carried 25 crew members from Croatia, Britain, Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia, the statement added.

The 318,000-tonne vessel, launched earlier this year, is flagged in Liberia and operated by Vela International.

The International Maritime Bureau has reported that at least 83 ships have been attacked off Somalia since January, of which 33 were hijacked. Of those, 12 vessels and more than 200 crew were still in the hands of pirates.

Last week, the European Union started a security operation off the coast of Somalia, north of Kenya, to combat growing acts of piracy and protect ships carrying aid agency deliveries. It is the EU's first-ever naval mission.

Dubbed Operation Atlanta, the mission, endorsed by the bloc's defence ministers at talks in Brussels, is being led by Britain, with its headquarters in Northwood, near London.

Pirates are well organised in the area where Somalia's northeastern tip juts into the Indian Ocean, preying on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which an estimated 30 percent of the world's oil transits.

They operate high-powered speedboats and are heavily armed, sometimes holding ships for weeks until they are released for large ransoms paid by governments or owners.

NATO warships, along with ships and aircraft from several other nations have been deployed in the region to protect commercial shipping.

Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.