MOGADISHU: Somali elders sought to mediate yesterday between the US Navy and pirates holding an American hostage in a high-seas standoff that presents President Barack Obama with a nasty new dilemma.
Four pirates adrift in a lifeboat far out in the Indian Ocean with Richard Phillips, the 53-year-old American captain of a cargo ship they tried to seize Wednesday, have demanded $2 million for his release and a guarantee of their own safety.
He is one of about 260 hostages now being held by the swelling numbers of pirates from lawless Somalia who prey on the busy sea lanes of the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.
With three US warships in the area, Somali elders and relatives of the pirates holding the Vermont father-of-two plan a mediation mission in the hope of avoiding bloodshed, said a regional organization that monitors piracy.
“They are just looking to arrange safe passage for the pirates, no ransom,” said group coordinator Andrew Mwangura.
Pirates seized another vessel yesterday, a US-owned, Italian-flagged tugboat with 10 Italians and six others on board, NATO officials on a warship in the region said.
Earlier, attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the cabin of the commanding officer of another ship in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. They also fired bullets.
The grenade did not explode and the ship’s crew managed to repel the attackers with water hoses, the NATO officials said.
On Friday, French Special Forces stormed a yacht held by pirates elsewhere in the lawless stretch of the Indian Ocean in an assault that killed one hostage, but freed four. Two of the pirates were killed and three captured.
A US military official said the destroyer Bainbridge was near the lifeboat and had been joined by the Boxer, the flagship of a US-led multinational counter-piracy task force which has a crew of about 1,000 and dozens of attack planes and helicopters. The US guided-missile frigate Halyburton was also nearby. At one point, Phillips tried to escape by jumping overboard but “didn’t get very far,” a US official said.
The Bainbridge launched monitoring drones and kept radio contact with the pirates. “What continues to be our No. 1 priority is the safe and healthy return of the captain,” said a Pentagon spokesman.
The gang holding Phillips remained defiant. “We will defend ourselves if attacked,” one told Reuters by satellite phone.
Pirates on a 20,000-ton German container vessel with 24 hostages gave up an attempt to use the ship as a “shield” to protect the lifeboat holding Phillips.
“We have come back to Haradheere coast. We could not locate the lifeboat,” one pirate on the German ship the Hansa Stavanger, who identified himself as Suleiman, told Reuters.
Relatives said Phillips had volunteered to get in the lifeboat with the pirates in exchange for the safety of his crew, who regained control of the 17,000-ton, Danish-owned Maersk Alabama, on Wednesday.
The ship docked in Kenya’s Mombasa port yesterday with its cargo of food relief.
In Somalia’s semi-autonomous northern Puntland region, which prides itself on its relative stability, a court sentenced 10 pirates to 20 years in prison yesterday for attacking a Syrian-registered ship in October 2008.
But piracy is likely to go on while Somalia stays in chaos.
