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Subject:
Mystery surrounds hijacked Iranian ship
Softwar
9/29/2008 5:52:25 AM
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Mystery surrounds hijacked Iranian ship
By Nick GraceSeptember 22, 2008 12:20 PM
080921_deyanat.jpg
The MV Iran Deyanat. Photo from Maritime News Russia.
Written by Nick Grace & Abdiweli Ali, Ph.D.
A tense standoff is underway in northeastern Somalia between pirates,
Somali authorities, and Iran over a suspicious merchant vessel and its
mysterious cargo. Hijacked late last month in the Gulf of Aden, the MV
Iran Deyanat remains moored offshore in Somali waters and inaccessible
for inspection. Its declared cargo consists of minerals and industrial
products, however, Somali and regional officials directly involved in
the negotiations over the ship and who spoke to The Long War Journal are
convinced that it was heading to Eritrea to deliver small arms and
chemical weapons to Somalia's Islamist insurgents.
It was business as usual when speedboats surrounded the MV Iran Deyanat
on August 21. The 44468 dead weight tonnage bulk carrier was pushing
towards the Suez and had just entered the Gulf of Aden - dangerous
waters where instability, greed and no-questions-asked ransom payments
have led to a recent surge in piracy. Steaming past the Horn of Africa,
82 nautical miles southeast of al-Makalla in Yemen, the ship was a prize
for the taking. It would bring hundreds of thousands of dollars -
possibly millions - to the Somalia-based crime syndicate. The captain
was defenseless against the 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and
rocket-propelled grenades blocking his passage. He had little choice
other than to turn his ship over to them. What the pirates were not
banking on, however, was that this was no ordinary ship.
The MV Iran Deyanat is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of
Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) - a state-owned company run by the Iranian
military that was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on
September 10, shortly after the ship's hijacking. According to the U.S.
Government, the company regularly falsifies shipping documents in order
to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe
shipments to avoid the attention of shipping authorities, and employs
the use of cover entities to circumvent United Nations sanctions to
facilitate weapons proliferation for the Iranian Ministry of Defense.
The MV Iran Deyanat set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July
and, according to its manifest, planned to travel to Rotterdam, where it
would unload 42,500 tons of iron ore and "industrial products" purchased
by a German client. Its arrival in the Gulf of Aden, Somali officials
tell The Long War Journal, was suspiciously early. According to a
publicly available status report on the IRISL Web site, the ship reached
the Gulf on August 20 and was scheduled to reach the Suez Canal on
August 27 - a seven day journey. "Depending on the speed of the ship,"
Puntland Minister of Ports Ahmed Siad Nur said in a phone interview on
Saturday, "it should take between 4 and 5 days to reach Suez."
A hijacked bulk carrier looms in the horizon of the beach in Eyl. Photo
from Garowe Online.
Suspicion has also been cast on the ship's crew, half of which is almost
entirely staffed by Iranians - a large percentage of Iranian nationals
for a standard merchant vessel. Somali officials say that the ship has a
crew of 29 men, including a Pakistani captain, an Iranian engineer, 13
other Iranians, 3 Indians, 2 Filipinos, and 10 Eastern Europeans,
possibly Croatian.
The MV Iran Deyanat was brought to Eyl, a sleepy fishing village in
northeastern Somalia, and was secured by a larger gang of pirates - 50
onboard and 50 onshore. Within days, pirates who had boarded the ship
developed strange health complications, skin burns and loss of hair.
Independent sources tell The Long War Journal that a number of pirates
have also died. "Yes, some of them have died. I do not know exactly how
many but the information that I am getting is that some of them have
died," Andrew Mwangura, Director of the East African Seafarers'
Assistance Program, said Friday when reached by phone in Mombasa.
News about the illness and the toxic cargo quickly reached Garowe, seat
of the government for the autonomous region of Puntland. Angered over
the wave of piracy and suspicious about the Iranian ship, authorities
dispatched a delegation led by Minister of Minerals and Oil Hassan
Allore Osman to investigate the situation on September 4. Osman also
confirmed to The Long War Journal that during the six days he negotiated
with the pirates members of the syndicate had become sick and died.
"That ship is unusual," he said. "It is not carrying a normal shipment."
The delegation faced a tense situation in Eyl, Osman recounts. The
syndicate had demanded a $9 million ransom for 10 ships that were in its
possession and refused permission to inspect the Iranian vessel. At one
point, he said, the pirates threatened to "blow up" the MV Iran Deyanat
if authorities tried to inspect it with force. A committee of delegate
members and Eyl city officials was formed to negotiate directly with the
pirates in order to defuse the situation.
Once in direct contact, the pirates told Osman that they had attempted
to inspect the ship's seven cargo containers after they developed health
complications but the containers were locked. The crew claimed that they
did not have the "access codes" and could not open them. The delegation
secured contact with the captain and the engineer by cell phone and
demanded to know the nature of the cargo, however, Osman says that "they
were saying different things to different people." Initially they said
that the cargo contained "crude oil" but then claimed it contained
"minerals."
"The secrecy is not clear to us," Mwangura said about the cargo. "Our
sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals." IRISL has
flatly denied the ship is carrying a "dangerous consignment" and has
threatened legal action against Mwangura.
The syndicate set the ship's ransom at $2 million and the Iranian
government provided $200,000 to a local broker "to facilitate the
exchange." Iran refutes that it agreed to the price and has paid any
money to the pirates. Nevertheless, after sanctions were applied to
IRISL on September 10, Osman says, the Iranians told the pirates that
the deal was off. "They told the pirates that they could not come
because of the presence of the U.S. Navy." The region is patrolled by
the multinational Combined Taskforce 150, which includes ships from the
U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.
In a strange twist, the Iranian press claims that the U.S. has offered
to pay a $7 million bribe to the pirates to "receive entry permission
and search the vessel." Officials in the Pentagon and the Department of
State approached for this story refused to comment on the situation.
Somali officials would also not comment on any direct U.S. involvement
but one high-level official in the Puntland government told The Long War
Journal "I can say the ship is of interest to a lot of people, including
Puntland."
The exact nature of the cargo remains a mystery but officials in
Puntland and Baidoa are convinced the ship was carrying weapons to
Eritrea for Islamist insurgents. "We cannot inspect the cargo yet,"
Osman said, "but we are sure that it is weapons."
"Puntland requested the pirates two weeks ago to hand over this Iranian
ship, saying that it is carrying weapons to Eritrea," Puntland Fisheries
Minister Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf told Reuters. "I have seen food and other
odd items on the ship but I do not know what is hidden underneath."
Iran's involvement in the conflict in Somalia on behalf of Islamist
insurgents is well documented. In 2006, Iran flouted arms embargos and
provided sophisticated anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons to the
Islamic Courts Union (ICU), intelligence sources told The Long War
Journal, including SA-7 Strella and SA-18 Igla MANPADS - shoulder fired
surface-to-air missiles - as well as AT-3 Sagger antitank missiles.
A report issued by the United Nations in 2006 states that weapons were
transferred to Somalia through Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which also
absorbed a contingent of 700 Islamist fighters from Somalia during
Hezbollah's war with Israel. The report also states that Iran provided
support for Islamist training camps inside Somalia and had sent two
emissaries to negotiate with the ICU for access to Somalia's uranium mines.
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