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MOGADISHU, Somalia – A Somali court on Saturday sentenced three British nationals, an American and two Kenyans to at least 10 years in prison each for bringing millions of dollars intended for pirate ransom into the country. Two of the defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $15,000 fine, said Somali Information Ministry spokesman Abdifitah Abdinur. The other defendants were sentenced to 10 years and a $10,000 fine. The men were arrested in Mogadishu last month after their planes were found to be carrying millions of dollars in cash. A Somali official previously said the planes are...

Three Britons have been arrested in Somalia after a $3.6m ransom drop to release two vessels from pirates went wrong, according to diplomats. The Foreign Office confirmed the arrests on Friday, three days after they were seized. “We are aware of the arrest of three British nationals in Somalia. We are in touch with their employer,” it said, without identifying the company. ... The senior western diplomat said two planes, intended for Galkacyo, a contested town on the edge of northern Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland, were intercepted at Mogadishu airport, the Somali capital, where fierce fighting with al-Shabaab Islamist...

(AP) BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese general's call for land attacks on Somali pirate strongholds is being seen by analysts as another sign of the armed forces' growing assertiveness, even if the proposal is unlikely to result in action. Speaking at a news conference Wednesday in Washington, Gen. Chen Bingde said he believes land bases must be assaulted in order to eradicate piracy. "I think that for our counter-piracy campaigns to be effective, we should probably move beyond the ocean and crush their bases on the land," Chen said, adding that those funding and organizing piracy must be targeted along...

NEWS RELEASE DATE: MAY 2, 2011 LOCATION: PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A. CONTACT: PASTOR JOE SMAHA email: smahajoseph@yahoo.com SUBJECT: CHRISTIAN & MISSIONARY ALLIANCE SUES LOCAL CHURCH TO SEIZE ITS $1.2 MILLION PROPERTY AND BANK ACCOUNT BY FORCE

ARLINGTON, Va.--The Office of Naval Research (ONR) intends to launch on May 16 a new Internet wargame, recruiting a community of more than 1,000 players to collaborate on solving real-world problems facing the Navy. Scheduled to run for three weeks, the Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) exercise will recruit online players from across the government to suggest ways of combating piracy off the coast of Somalia. “MMOWGLI is an online game designed to find and collectively grow breakthrough ideas to some of the Navy's most complex problems--those 21st-century threats that demand new forms of collaboration and truly...

Pirate attacks quadrupled in the first three months of this year, as compared to the same time last year, several piracy experts said, and there have been four attacks in the last few days, prompting calls for Western powers to take a tougher stand against the threat. The most recent attacks were unsuccessful, but they shows the pirates still pose a serious threat despite improved patrols in the Gulf of Yemen. Pirates are now using hijacked “motherships” to do their dirty work, the European Union Naval Force in Somalia said. This makes them more powerful in two ways: They can...

MOGADISHU, Somalia, April 26 (UPI) -- International naval forces are expected to step up operations against Somali pirates but private security companies are seeking to provide armed escorts for merchant ships to counter the pirates' expansion into the Indian Ocean. The leading British insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson is organizing a fleet of 18 gunboats to shepherd convoys of vessels across the Gulf of Aden, which runs into Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, vital trading and oil routes now under increasing threat. ... Although business sources say much of the funds to finance the program have been secured, the CEP has...

Toughening its stand on the Indian sailors hostage crisis in Somalian waters, the Indian Navy today sent a Talwar class frigate to the Somalia coast to deal with any exigency during ongoing negotiations, even as the government rejected the pirates' offer for a swap with captured brigands. Overseas Indian Affairs minister Vayalar Ravi said the Indian government rejected the swap offer made by Somali pirates in order to get the abducted Indian sailors freed. The Government, he told mediapersons here, would not bargain with pirates for the release of the sailors, and added that his Ministry was coordinating with the...

As Somalian pirates continue to hold seven Indian merchant sailors hostage, the Indian Navy, in what is a possible retaliatory posture, today diverted a warship from anti-piracy patrolling duties to station it off the coast of Somalia in North-eastern Africa. On Friday pirates released eight of the 15 Indian sailors held hostage since September last year. Seven other Indians, which includes six officers, have been held back despite the pirates having got an undisclosed sum as ransom from the owners of the merchant ship MV Asphalt Venture. The ship was hijacked in September last year when it was on its...

When a Royal Navy warship captured a crew of Somali pirates, it seemed like a rare chance to strike back at the ruthless sea gangsters. The 17 outlaws were armed with an arsenal of AK 47s and rocket-propelled grenades, and had forced hostages on a hijacked fishing vessel to work as slaves for three months. But instead of bringing them to justice, the British servicemen were ordered to provide the pirates halal meals, medical checks, cigarettes – and in one case even a nicotine patch – before releasing them in their own boats. The extraordinary treatment – revealed in a...

There are cameras that capture images clear enough to distinguish between a fishing vessel and a boatload of pirates 10 miles away. There are cascades of water and noxious compounds to repel invaders. And there are shields to withstand a rocket-propelled grenade. A container ship that steamed into a Puerto Rican port Friday was old by commercial shipping standards but it had the latest in security measures, upgrades that convert it into a floating fortress designed to be impregnable to piracy.

International piracy costs the shipping industry billions of dollars a year and leads to high-profile murders that make global headlines. Longstanding concerns over piracy have led to numerous international laws and conventions designed to keep pirates in check – but research from North Carolina State University shows that the tangled network of laws may actually be helping pirates escape justice. “We wanted to know why the international community is not working together and taking advantage of existing laws to address piracy, even as piracy is on the rise in places like the horn of Africa,” says Dr. Mark Nance, assistant...

TV channels are demanding that the Government should pay ransom to free Indian sailors held hostage. We saw similar media frenzy during IC-814 crisis. On December 8, 1989, Ms Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, who had become India’s Minister for Home Affairs less than a week earlier, was kidnapped by members of the separatist Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front. Amidst a frenzy of media attention, Prime Minister VP Singh buckled and sent two of his Ministers, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral and Mr Arif Mohammed Khan, to Srinagar. Despite strong warnings from Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and indications that...

Five dozen pirates living on a hijacked ship serving as a roving pirate base jumped into the Arabian Sea on Monday after the Indian navy fired on the vessel in self-defense, the navy said Monday. The navy captured 61 pirates fleeing the battle and the fire that broke out aboard the hijacked vessel. The battle is the latest example of the piracy trade's turn toward increased violence. A pirate in Somalia threatened Indian sailors and the government with targeted attacks in retaliation for the arrests. The Indian navy said a patrol aircraft spotted the mothership Friday while responding to another...

The Indian Government is mulling over the idea of having armed escorts on merchant ships akin to those appointed in airlines in the wake of an increase in the number of attacks by Somali pirates. The decision is under consideration after Indian ship owners sought the government's permission to have guards on ships as a defensive mechanism. The hijacking of ships near the coast of Somalia has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars. Pirates have continued to attack foreign ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, defying an armada of warships trying to protect the key...

NEW DELHI: India now plans to take the battle to the pirates, with measures finalized to give more operational and legal teeth to Navy and Coast Guard. This will enable the two maritime forces to operate "much more aggressively" against sea brigands on the high seas than ever before. Under the new rules of engagement and standard operating procedures firmed up, Indian warships will now engage or disable pirate ships in "a far more pro-active manner". "Till now, our warships were usually opening fire in self-defence or if pirates were found attacking or hijacking merchant vessels. The new measures will...

NEW DELHI: After clearing new aggressive rules of engagement for naval warships to go on an "all out offensive'' against pirates, the government is now also moving towards allowing armed guards on Indian merchant vessels to keep the sea brigands at bay. The armed guards, akin to sky marshals deployed on civil airliners to prevent hijacking, are likely to be drawn from retired personnel of Navy and Coast Guard, who are well-versed in maritime as well as security matters, said sources. Another proposal being pushed by Navy is to make it mandatory for all merchant vessels to have "safe houses...

NORFOLK, VA—Five men from Somalia were sentenced today to life followed by a consecutive 80 years in prison for engaging in piracy and related offenses in their attack on the USS Nicholas. Neil H. MacBride, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office; Alex J. Turner, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office; and Mark Russ, Special Agent in Charge of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) in Norfolk, made the announcement after sentencing by United States District Judge Mark S. Davis. “Today...

Pirates hijacked 53 ships and held a total of 1,181 hostages for ransom last year, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Forty nine of those ships and 1,016 of those hostages – from commercial and private vessels -- were seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia, a statistic that was brought into sharp relief last month when Somali pirates hijacked a yacht and on Feb. 22 murdered the four Americans aboard. Two days later, a Danish family, including three children, was taken from their yacht by Somali pirates and as of this writing had been moved to a larger...

Denmark's government says pirates in the Indian Ocean have hijacked a Danish sailboat with four adults and three children on board. The Danish Foreign Ministry says the ship sent a distress signal on Thursday, and "It has now been confirmed that the sailboat was hijacked by pirates." The ministry said Monday that a Danish couple, their three children — aged 12-16 — and two adult crew members were on board the boat. All are Danish nationals.