Twenty-four nations pledged on Wednesday at a US-led meeting to better coordinate their efforts against Somali piracy in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
Diplomats met privately at UN headquarters for the first time to talk about how to fight the rise of piracy off Somalia’s lawless coastline, where 11 vessels with 210 crew members are now in pirate hands.
“So much of this is synchronization and adding on to the great work that our sailors from, at this point, 16 different nations on the water are conducting,” the group’s chairman, US Assistant Secretary of State Mark Kimmitt, told reporters after the nearly day-long meeting.
“We believe that 2009 will be a year where we can turn this problem around if we come together as a group of nations, working not simply the military aspect, but the judicial aspect, the financial aspect, the industry aspect,” he said.
Kimmitt, who deals with political and military affairs, told reporters that so far, officials have found “no links” showing that the pirates are working for any established terrorist groups.
Most are believed to be former Somali fishermen.
But during the closed-door meeting, Kimmitt said there is “a sense, not fully developed” among US counter-piracy officials that there should be more focus on where the money is coming from to finance the pirates’ operations.
He suggested that pirates might be receiving financing by “external” or some other “private groups” that are helping pay for intelligence, logistics, GPS and communications devices.
The meeting was also presided over by representatives of Yemen, Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Spain and Somalia.
In related news, Japan will send a warship to the pirate-infested waters off Somalia as early as April, the Nikkei Shimbun reported yesterday, as shipping industry leaders pressed the government to take immediate action.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will authorize a plan within the month for a destroyer to head to the waters off the lawless African nation, the report said, citing unnamed sources.
Asked about the report, a defense ministry spokeswoman said no timeline had been decided.
Meanwhile, pirates holding a Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with tanks have sacked Somali middlemen trying to secure its release and are negotiating directly with the owners, an associate of the gang said yesterday.
The MV Faina was carrying 33 Soviet-era T-72 tanks and other weapons when it was seized in September. The pirates initially demanded a US$20 million ransom, lowered to US$5 million.
Osman Farah, an onshore associate of the gang on the Faina, said his colleagues now expected more than US$5 million after they sacked the middlemen negotiating on their behalf.
“Somali brokers had been delaying the process by reporting only half, or less, of the ransom being offered,” Farah said by telephone from the coastal town of Haradheere.
The Faina’s owners could not immediately be reached for comment.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS