FBI negotiates with Somali pirates holding US captain hostage

Published on Thursday 9 April 2009 17:16

FBI hostage negotiators have been called to help end the stand-off with Somali pirates holding a US ship captain hostage on the high seas.

The pirates and their captive are in a drifting lifeboat off Somalia, with a US warship watching nearby.

An FBI spokesman said the negotiators were "fully engaged" in the incident.

The pirates took Capt. Richard Phillips as a hostage as they escaped the Maersk Alabama cargo ship in a lifeboat after attempting to capture it, the first such attack on American sailors in around 200 years.

Today the cruiser USS Bainbridge arrived off the Horn of Africa near where the pirates were floating beside the Maersk.

"It's on the scene at this point," a spokesman for the ship's owners said of the Bainbridge, adding that the lifeboat was out of fuel.

"The boat is dead in the water. It's floating near the Alabama. It's my understanding that it's floating freely," he said.

The US Navy also sent up P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and has video footage of the scene.

The Bainbridge was among several US ships that had been patrolling in the region when the 17,000-ton US-flagged cargo ship and its 20 crew were captured Wednesday.

Capt. Phillips' family was gathered at his Vermont farmhouse, anxiously watching news reports and taking telephone calls from the US State Department to learn if he would be freed.

With one warship nearby and more on the way, piracy expert Roger Middleton from London-based think tank Chatham House said the pirates were facing difficult choices.

"The pirates are in a very, very tight corner," Middleton said. "They've got only one guy, they've got nowhere to hide him, they've got no way to defend themselves effectively against the military who are on the way and they are hundreds of miles from Somalia."

The pirates would probably try to get to a mothership, he said, one of the larger vessels that tow the pirates' speedboats out to sea and resupply them as they lie in wait for prey. But they also would be aware that if they try to take Capt. Phillips to Somalia, they might be intercepted. And if they hand him over, they would almost certainly be arrested.

Other analysts said the US will be reluctant to use force as long as one of its citizens remains hostage. French commandos, for example, have mounted two military operations against pirates once the ransom had been paid and its citizens were safe.

The Maersk Alabama, en route to neighbouring Kenya and loaded with relief aid, was attacked about 380 miles east of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. It was the sixth vessel seized in a week.

Many of the pirates have shifted their operations down the Somali coastline from the Gulf of Aden to escape naval warship patrols, which had some success in preventing attacks last year.

International attention focused on Somali pirates last year after the audacious hijackings of an arms shipment and a Saudi oil supertanker.

Currently warships from more than a dozen nations are patrolling off the Somali coast but analysts say the multimillion-dollar ransoms paid out by companies ensure piracy in war-ravaged, impoverished Somalia will not disappear.

The attacks often raise the question why ship owners do not arm their crew to fend off attacks. Much of the problem lies with the cargo. The Saudi supertanker, for example, was loaded with two million barrels of oil. The vapour from that cargo was highly flammable; a spark from the firing of a gun could cause an explosion.

There is also the problem of keeping the pirates off the ships – once they are on board, they will very likely fight back and people will die.

Pirates travel in open skiffs with outboard engines, working with larger ships that tow them far out to sea. They use satellite navigational and communications equipment, and have an intimate knowledge of local waters, clambering aboard commercial vessels with ladders and grappling hooks.

Any blip on an unwary ship's radar screens, alerting the crew to nearby vessels, is likely to be mistaken for fishing trawlers or any number of smaller, non-threatening ships that take to the seas every day.