Posted on 09/15/2009 10:04:17 PM PDT by Saije
The Somali pirates preying on shipping in the Gulf of Aden and more recently the Indian Ocean are zeroed in on their targets by well-placed informers in London, a world center for shipbroking and insurance, using satellite phones, according to a European military intelligence report.
The document, which was obtained by Cadena SER, a Spanish radio station, says the "consultants" in London help the pirates select their targets, providing data on the ships' cargoes and courses...
The U.N. International Maritime Bureau reported this month that there had been a dramatic surge in piracy in the waters of the Horn of Africa -- 138 pirate attacks so far this year, with 33 vessels hijacked. Last year the pirates attacked more than 100 ships.
The report was compiled by European military intelligence agencies and circulated to those countries involved in the European Union's naval Operation Atalanta to protect merchant vessels plying the maritime lanes off Somalia used by some 20,000 ships a year.
In some cases, the report noted, the pirates had trained to attack specific ships well before the vessels reached the marauders' hunting grounds off Somalia.
The ships are tracked en route to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean by the "consultants" operating in the close-knit ship brokerage and insurance markets in London.
Once the vessels are in the pirates' operational zones, the marauders track them with Global Positioning Systems and radar and then pounce.
The ships are held for ransom that, according to international security firms such as Control Risks in London or ASI Global in Houston, is usually delivered by airdrop in large floating plastic containers at pre-arranged spots at sea where the pirates pick it up when the coast is clear.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
I hope the pirates don’t read UPI, because now they would know one of their methods has been compromised....
It would obviously be easy to kill a number of these pirates, but it seems that people in high places have decided that it is less costly to just pay ransom.
Good point, except it probably doesn’t matter. Doesn’t seem to be much international will to do something serious about this problem, from what I can tell.
Takes money to make money. I'm remind of both the comic strip villains and 'some' in our current government(s).
Should also include the media. They are culpable due to their bias and omissions.
Londonistan.
Shouldn’t be hard to flush out the perps.
It's not ransom, it's trickle-down foreign aid.
Should be pretty easy to incorporate counter intelligence and misdirection. Lead them to a valuable “cargo” ship full of Marines. It would take only one or two more hijacks for the piracy to stop.
Too bad nobody will do anything about it. We have pirates, gangs, and terrorists because people are too afraid to take the steps that will really end the problem.
It’s alright, all these ships have pirate insurance, so it doesn’t matter if the crew is kidnapped at gunpoint, forced to live in horrid conditions, as the insurance company will pay the ransom and everything will be fine...
Huh, kinda like how we treat healthcare in this country.. Wonder what’s going on with the ship insurance? Oh, right, it’s going up.
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