MOGADISHU/MUMBAI (Agencies)
The $25 million ransom demanded for the release of a Saudi super-tanker laden with crude oil is unchanged, a leader of the group of Somali pirates who seized the ship told AFP Monday.
"We have not changed the amount of the ransom, it remains at exactly $25 million. If we want to change it, it will have to be agreed unanimously with all the people involved," said Mohamed Said.
Said, the leader and spokesman of the group holding the ship, was reached by phone in the coastal village of Harardhere, off which the Sirius Star was anchored after its capture in the Indian Ocean on November 15.
Earlier Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Isse Adow, whose men are in the Haradheere area , told Reuters that demand had been reduced.
" If you retaliated, they would have shot you.... They were drug addicts. Their only purpose was money " Naveed Burombka, trainee officer "Middlemen have given a $15 million ransom figure for the Saudi ship. That is the issue now," Adow told Reuters.
Adow, who represents the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), said his men are out to confront the pirates and release the Saudi Arabian tanker because it is a "Muslim" ship. But residents say other Islamist militias are intent on getting a cut of any ransom payment.
He added that pirates had taken the ship further out to 100 kilometers (62 miles) off the coast of central Somalia after Islamist militia poured into the town in recent days in search of the group behind the audacious capture of the Saudi oil tanker that has shocked the world, sparking panic in the shipping industry and prompting companies to reroute sea-borne cargo.
Neither the U.S. navy, which is tracking the saga closely along with other international naval vessels in the area, nor the ship's operators have confirmed any ransom demand |
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MV Stolt Valor Pirate attacks have increased exponentially and forced ships to find alternate routes Two days before the capture of the Sirius Star, pirates released a chemical tanker after a ransom thought to be about $2.5 million was paid.
Freed members of the ship's crew said Monday after they returned home that their captors were gun-toting drug addicts whose only goal was money,
Three of the 18 Indian sailors who were on the MV Stolt Valor when it was hijacked two months ago said about 30 pirates seized the ship after firing a rocket-propelled grenade from a speedboat.
The Japanese-owned, Hong Kong-registered ship, which also had two Filipinos, a Bangladeshi and a Russian on board, was released on November 15.
The pirates appeared to be keeping in contact with other armed groups nearby, Naveed Burombka, a 20-year-old trainee officer, told a news conference in Mumbai.
He said one of the pirates was in charge of negotiations and the captain was kept updated on progress.
"If you retaliated, they would have shot you.... They were drug addicts. Their only purpose was money," he said.
General steward Allister Fernandes, 25, said fear spread throughout the crew as the pirates, making no effort to hide their identities, held them at gunpoint round the clock.
"We all had to stay on the bridge, all 22 crew members. We were sleeping there. It was very strict. We had to get their permission for everything," he told reporters. "Prayers kept us going."
No one was physically hurt, the men said, but likened their ordeal to "mental torture."
The general secretary of the National Union of Seafarers of
India, Abdulgani Serang, warned against romanticizing the pirates' actions and called for greater protection for ships in the region.
"They (pirates) are maritime terrorists," he told the news conference. |
