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  Piracy in the Gulf of Aden: German Shipowner Paid Ransom to Somali Pirates

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden German Shipowner Paid Ransom to Somali Pirates

By Udo Ludwig and Holger Stark

Part 2: High Stakes Poker

It was an odd game of poker. Abdi told the hijackers that the Bremen team had offered $2 million. But the shipping company had, in fact, not increased its previous offer. This made developments on Sep. 1, 12 days into the hostage crisis, all the more surprising. All of a sudden, the pirates said that they were satisfied with the offer from Bremen, prompting the Bremen team to wonder what had changed their minds. Were they afraid that the US Navy could launch a rescue mission? Or did they calculate that each additional day spent in the bay near Eyl was preventing them from hijacking more ships?

The two sides spent several days negotiating the money transfer. Abdi said that the only option was to hand over the money on board, noting that it would be the "only way we can save our asses." Then Abdi mentioned a problem of a more personal nature. He was merely a middleman, he said, and he had convinced the pirates to come down from their original demand of eight million to a little more than one million. "I saved you seven million, which means that I have my price." But the Bremen team was unwilling to pay more, and they advised Abdi to try to "get some of the ransom money."

Stolberg, convinced that he was approaching a breakthrough, encountered an unexpected obstacle in Germany. The state bank in Bremen did not have enough dollars on hand. Bank notes had to be brought in from Hamburg, and because the state bank there could only pay out a portion of the large sum in $20 bills instead of $100 bills, the shipping company needed two large pilot suitcases to accommodate all of the money. It was then flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where it was loaded onto a helicopter and taken to a small tugboat in the port city of Mombasa. From there, the English security firm took the ransom money to Somalia. After seven days, the tugboat had reached the "BBC Trinidad."

On Thursday morning of last week, two boots were moored to the Beluga freighter, the hijackers' speedboat on one side and the tugboat from Mombasa on the other. A doctor examined the crew and the pirates counted the money. Martin, the head of the security firm, recognized the pirates. He had handed over a similar sum of money a few weeks earlier to secure the release of the German ship "Lehmann Timber." The pirates divided up the money and placed it into 18 bags, presumably to pay 18 different clans. Then they left the ship, and the "BBC Trinidad" was allowed continue its voyage to Muscat.

"The Situation is Exploding"

The effort cost Niels Stolberg several million euros, although his insurance company will likely reimburse him for a portion of that money. But he could be at the mercy of the same criminals by tomorrow, he says. "The situation at the Horn of Africa is exploding," he says, adding that commercial shipping urgently needs convoys protected by the military as they pass the coasts of Somalia and Yemen.

European Union foreign minister took the overdue step of forming a special unit to protect shipping from pirates off the Somali coast. The "coordination unit" is designed to group warships, primarily from the French and Spanish navies, patrolling in the Gulf of Aden.

Thomas Kossendey, a state secretary in the Defense Ministry, represented Germany at that meeting. He knows that the region is considered a hot spot worldwide, and yet he has been one of the most vocal opponents of a "spontaneous" rescue mission by the German military, the Bundeswehr. In fact, Kossendey and his boss, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), want more. They are pushing for an amendment to a law that prohibits the navy from engaging in policing missions.

It was because of this law that the German navy frigate "Emden" spent months sailing off the coast of Somalia, while various freighters were being hijacked, and yet it did not intervene. The Bundeswehr justified its inaction by claiming that the legal basis for such intervention was questionable. If the EU approves an operation, State Secretary Kossendey assumes that the Germans will take part in a concerted action against the pirates, beginning in mid-December.

Until then, however, the situation could escalate even further. Walter Lindner, the German ambassador in Kenya, sent an urgent appeal to Berlin only a few weeks ago. The diplomat noted that the pirates were using the millions they had collected in ransom money to constantly upgrade their arsenals. This is bad news for ship owners like Stolberg, with at least two ships from his fleet passing the pirate coast each week.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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