Pirate watch

A ship with Russian sailors was captured again near Somalia

Another pirate attack on Russian sailors took place on Tuesday night in the neutral waters of the Gulf of Aden near Somalia. This time, pirates hijacked the Dutch cargo ship Amia Sken, which was sailing under the Panamanian flag from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the Romanian port of Constanta. On board was a decommissioned oil platform. The ship's crew is four Russian officers and five Filipino sailors.

After the capture, the Somali pirates did not make contact for a long time - not only the fate of the sailors remained unknown, but also the location of the hijacked ship. Usually in such cases, criminals try to drive the ship into the territorial waters of Somalia and from there begin negotiations demanding a ransom. Yesterday, late in the evening, the Dutch company Dutch Raider Shipping, the owner of Amiya Scan, managed to establish contact with the kidnappers and begin negotiations. According to the company, all crew members are healthy and were not injured during the attack. The ship's owners declined to comment further, in particular about the demands being put forward.

However, the efforts of Dutch negotiators may not be successful due to legal nuances. As explained by the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Herbert Brinkman, since Amiya Scan flies under the Panamanian flag, it is very difficult for the Dutch authorities from a legal point of view to take any steps. “The flag, and not the owner of the ship, is the determining factor in this case. We are closely monitoring the development of the situation, but to intervene in it there must be a legal basis, and from a legal point of view this is a Panamanian ship. There are no Dutch citizens on board,” he said Brinkman. He suggested that the Dutch Raider Shipping company should first contact the Panamanian authorities. "Since this is a Panamanian ship, it is up to Panama to take steps to free it," he said.

But while the Panamanian authorities are deciding whether they should enter into negotiations with criminals from Somalia, the Department of Information and Press of the Russian Foreign Ministry told an ITAR-TASS correspondent what actions are being taken to help Russians in trouble. “Upon receiving information about the seizure of a ship with Russians on board, the Russian Foreign Ministry immediately began to clarify the circumstances of the incident and consider ways to solve the problem,” noted Smolenskaya Square.

Pirate attacks have become a lucrative business in Somalia, where civil war has raged for almost 17 years as Western companies pay big money for captured sailors.

This pirate attack was the sixth in the past two months along the Somali coast. In addition, this is the third case since the beginning of 2008 of the hijacking of ships with a Russian crew. On January 20, the ship "Captain Uskov" with a crew of 17 Russians disappeared in the East China Sea. The ship, flying the flag of Cambodia, was traveling with a cargo of metal from Nakhodka to Hong Kong. The most likely version of his disappearance is kidnapping by pirates. The search, which in addition to Russia involved Japan, China and the Republic of Korea, has been stopped. On February 1, while leaving the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, the ice tug Switzer Korsakov, chartered by the Danish company Switzer, with a crew of two British and four Russian citizens, was captured by pirates. The vessel transporting the oil platform was making a voyage from St. Petersburg to Sakhalin with a call at Singapore. On March 18, the tug and crew were released after the pirates received a ransom of $700,000.

Nina GUGUSHVILI