WASHINGTON: The US Navy summoned the FBI in crisis atmosphere yesterday for advice on how to rescue a cargo ship captain held hostage in the Indian Ocean by pirates who seized his vessel off the coast of Somalia.
At the same time, the shipping company Maersk demanded that Capt. Richard Phillips be returned and called his safety its No. 1 priority. The Obama administration, for its part, weighed options in an incident at sea that dramatized the limits of US military power in international cops-and-robbers scenarios.
As the FBI joined the delicate negotiations, President Barack Obama, facing one of his first national security tests, declined comment when asked about the standoff. Vice President Joe Biden said the administration was working “round the clock” on the problem.
With the USS Bainbridge, a US Navy destroyer, standing watch in nearby seas, the Maersk Alabama cargo ship and its crew of about 20 — minus the captain — left the area.
Capt. Joseph Murphy, a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and father of the ship’s second-in-command, Capt. Shane Murphy, said the cargo ship was headed to the Kenyan port of Mombasa with an armed guard of 18 aboard.
Murphy said he was told about the development by company officials who are briefing families. He said the ship will likely arrive in Mombasa in about 50 hours.
A US source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that a military team of armed guards was aboard the Maersk Alabama.
At the FBI, spokesman Richard Kolko described the bureau’s hostage negotiating team as “fully engaged” with the military in strategizing ways to retrieve the ship’s captain.
The FBI was summoned as the Pentagon substantially stepped up its monitoring of the hostage standoff, sending in P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and other equipment and securing video footage of the scene.
A commander from the group of pirates which hijacked the ship said pirate reinforcements were on their way to try and help those holding the hostage. The hijackers are effectively surrounded.
