MOGADISHU: Somali Islamist fighters yesterday urged pirates holding a Saudi Aramco supertanker to free the ship or face armed action.
“If the pirates want peace, they had better release the tanker,” said Sheikh Ahmed, a spokesman for the Shabab group in the coastal region of Haradheere.
The Sirius Star, a huge tanker carrying around $100 million worth of crude oil, was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean on Nov. 15.
Pirates have since anchored it off their base in Haradheere and have demanded a ransom of $25 million be paid by Nov. 30.
The Shabab armed group controls much of southern and central Somalia, and has positioned fighters in and around Haradheere in recent days.
Islamist leaders have stressed that piracy is a capital offense in Islam and officially condemned the surge in acts of piracy in Somalia’s waters.
A member of the pirate group holding the Sirius Star retorted that his men were not afraid of the Shabab’s threats. “We are the Shabab of the sea and we can’t be scared by the Shabab of the land,” Mohamed Sayeed told AFP. “If anybody attempts to attack, that would be suicide.”
Sayeed announced to AFP on Thursday that his group was demanding $25 million to release the vessel, which is carrying the equivalent of almost a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily output.
“I am not on the tanker at the moment because I am coordinating what is happening on the ground,” he said. “There is a small Shabab vanguard on the ground but we also have a strong presence.”
“Every Somali has great respect for the holy kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We have nothing against them, but unfortunately what happened was just business for us and I hope the Saudis will understand,” the pirate added.
Some residents in Haradheere have argued however that the Shabab are divided over the issue of piracy and that some of the Islamist fighters have moved into the region only to claim a share of the ransom.
The capture of the Sirius Star has created panic in the shipping world, with companies now re-routing deliveries via the Cape of Good Hope, adding substantial time and transit costs.
Over the past week, two major shipping industry players, Odfjell of Norway and A.P. Moeller-Maersk of Denmark, have announced that part or all of their fleets will from now on sail around South Africa’s southern tip instead of bottle-necking into the Red Sea through Somalia’s pirate-infested waters.
With close to 100 attacks on ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean this year, the pirates are threatening to choke one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes. World leaders have condemned the surge in piracy and rushed extra navy ships to the area in a bid to curb the attacks. But the international community and the shipping industry alike have acknowledged that the problem could never be completely resolved without an improvement of the situation inside Somalia.
