By SPIEGEL Staff
The relevant government agencies had already reached a basic agreement in November, under which the GSG-9 would be responsible for "hostage situations." To be on the safe side, Hanning's superior, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), put in a call to Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, who is also a Christian Democrat. Jung was pleased to hear Schäuble telling him that the GSG-9 would handle the operation. The elite police unit has more experience with kidnappings and can act without fear of legal repercussions, the logic being that the job of law enforcement is to hunt down criminals, giving the German parliament, the Bundestag, no excuse to get involved. An attack by the KSK, on the other hand, would be a military operation, which requires parliamentary approval. Besides, Jung is seen as a man who prefers not be in the forefront.
Ironically, Bundeswehr forces were already relatively close to the freighter when it was hijacked. When radio operators on board the Rheinland-Pfalz received the distress call from the captain of the Stavanger, the German navy frigate, piloted by Captain Markus Rehbein, was 250 nautical miles away. By that point, the Stavanger was already bound for Harardere, and it appeared that there were only five or six pirates on board.
For the team at the Foreign Ministry, preventing the pirates from reaching Harardere was of paramount importance, because they would likely receive reinforcement there. There was no time to be wasted, and for Silberberg, the situation was clear: "As long as there are only five pirates on board, we can attack and bring a speedy end to the matter." Hanning's staff assured him that the GSG-9 team could be ready for deployment at the nearest secure port, Mombasa, within 96 hours -- a very short time frame for an operation of this magnitude. But, as it turned out, it would take the pirates only 24 hours to reach Harardere.
The Rheinland-Pfalz has a crew of more than 200 men and is armed with artillery, rockets and helicopters. It was capable of stopping the pirates. It even had a special team of about a dozen men trained to board hostile ships, the " Navy Specialized Deployment Force." But the naval unit had never been trained to rescue hostages. Stopping the hijacked ship would not have been a problem, but the issue was complicated by the presence of hostages.
When the pirates discovered the German frigate, the captain of the Hansa Stavanger, fearing for the lives of his crew, sent a radio message to Rehbein, the frigate captain, asking him to keep his distance. Rehbein complied and did not intervene.
A second opportunity arose a few days later. After being taken to Harardere, the Hansa Stavanger suddenly left the coast again, but now with 14 armed men on board. The pirates had decided to rush to the aid of another pirate gang that had boarded the American container ship Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean and was now being chased by the US Navy.
The contrasts between the case of the Maersk Alabama and that of the Stavanger couldn't have been more glaring. The crew of the American freighter defended itself the minute the pirates came on board, forcing the Somalis to flee in a small lifeboat. But the pirates had kidnapped the ship's captain, Richard Phillips. The crisis ended a few days later when US Navy SEAL snipers shot three of the pirates and rescued Phillips, who was unharmed.
As the pirates on board the Hansa Stavanger rushed to the rescue, they were tailed by a second German frigate, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Somalis, unable to find their fellow pirates, drifted around the Indian Ocean for days. Meanwhile, back in Berlin, the members of the crisis team concluded that German forces had to be able to either recapture the Stavanger or at least prevent it from returning to Harardere. Under cover of darkness, 18 special forces troops parachuted out of a Transall military transport plane near the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where they were picked up by a rubber raft and taken to the frigate. The troops, part of an elite Bundeswehr unit, had orders to be prepared to board the hijacked ship.
The crisis team considered stopping the hijacked ship by firing a warning shot across its bow or firing at its rudder. But the question of how the soldiers were to rescue the hostages remained unanswered.
Meanwhile, the frigate diligently continued to follow the Hansa Stavanger at a distance of a few nautical miles, but without attacking. The pirates, after searching for their comrades in vain, returned to Harardere, where they dropped anchor.
Schäuble and State Secretary Hanning criticized the military officials for wavering too long. By then, the consensus of the first few days among government officials had fallen apart. Hanning, dissatisfied with the Bundeswehr's handling of the matter, turned to the Americans for help, and the Interior Ministry requested the use of the USS Boxer.
Senior officials at the Foreign and Defense Ministry were not enthusiastic about the idea. Defense Minister Jung's state secretary felt that the German ships were sufficient, and the Foreign Ministry was opposed to depending on the help of others. The diplomats feared that the Americans would insist on taking a more offensive approach against the pirates, but no one anticipated that they would, in fact, eventually take precisely the opposite position.
Despite these objections, the Interior Ministry managed to submit an official request for assistance to the Americans. Washington approved the request and provided the Germans with the use of the USS Boxer, an enormous helicopter carrier, which was ready to be deployed. The ship's berth at the port in Mombasa was sealed off and containers were stacked around its hatchway, preventing unwanted observers, even on the surrounding hills, from seeing the heavy German equipment being loaded onto the vessel.
But the mission still faced logistical problems. To transport the GSG-9's six special helicopters to Africa, Hanning's elite unit needed large cargo aircraft, which it had to lease from a Russian-Ukrainian company. The Interior Ministry requested several Antonov transporters, but the company was unable to deliver the number of aircraft needed on such short notice.
The first ransom demand had been received by then. The pirates used the ship's satellite phone to contact the shipping company, demanding $15 million (€11.4 million) in ransom. Officials at the Hamburg-based shipping company quickly made the necessary preparations to begin negotiations. Its insurance company, which expected to pay a ransom, eventually, had also sent a representative.
On April 10 -- Good Friday -- the German government was finally ready to act. On Easter Sunday, two Antonov An-124, three Ilyushin Il-76 one Transall and one Airbus departed for Mombasa, loaded with weapons, explosives and six "Puma" and "Bell" helicopters. The Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), Germany's disaster relief organization, managed the logistics, and the GSG-9, after having sent an advance commando earlier, deployed the remainder of the team, comprising more than 200 men.
The military equipment was slipped through the Mombasa airport -- a delicate matter for the Kenyan government, which seeks to avoid open confrontation with neighboring Somalia. The German Embassy in the Kenyan capital Nairobi sent a verbal notification of the arrival of each individual military transport to the Kenyan authorities, including a vague mention of military material and thanking the Kenyans for their cooperation.
The fact that the Kenyans were willing to cooperate was partly due to the efforts of Walter Lindner, the German ambassador in Nairobi, who used his contacts within the government to ensure that the operation went smoothly. In a text message, Lindner wished "Dear Moses" Wetangula, Kenya's foreign minister, a happy Easter and added the brief message: "Let's talk later this week." In plain language, the ambassador's message meant: We prefer not to discuss the details of these unusual shipments at this time.
Meanwhile, the GSG-9 had set up its headquarters at the Bahari Beach Hotel in Mombasa. A banner across the entrance to the hotel, a popular destination for German tourists, reads: "World of TUI," a reference to a leading German tour operator. In the GSG-9 command center, on a floor of the hotel directly above the lobby, the curtains were drawn and sheets of cardboard were placed in the window frames. Technicians set up satellite dishes outside, and inside the command center, the lights were kept on day and night.
The frogmen, snipers and paratroopers did their best not to attract attention by crowding around the buffet or congregating too conspicuously at the pool. Nevertheless, a group of men with unusually broad shoulders, muscular physiques and shaved chests are bound to be noticed, especially when they spend minutes underwater and swim at high speeds through the pool, passing elderly women doing water aerobics. The men also attracted attention at the bar where, instead of drinking the Tusker Beer on tap, they would order glasses of water with a slice of lemon.
The negotiations were already underway in Hamburg by then. The pirates had reduced their ransom demand to $6 million (€4.5 million), but it was still too much for the shipping company, which countered with an offer of $600,000 (€450,000). It was the usual game of pirate poker, in which losing one's nerve means losing the game.
At the Bahari Beach Hotel, the situation was becoming serious for Olaf Lindner, 42, the head of the legendary GSG-9 for the past three-and-a-half years. Lindner, a reserved man, polite but determined, knew that Berlin would eventually ask for a decision. He was also aware that it probably be the most difficult decision he had ever made. If all went well, there would be many winners. If the mission failed, he would be expected to shoulder much of the blame.
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