Gunmen kidnap scores from Italian vessel

NF Reporter · 11-22-2006, 04:48 AM

AP - Gunmen have seized scores of hostages from an Italian oil supply vessel off the coast of southern Nigeria, police and security contractors said Wednesday.

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waltky · 11-15-2007, 04:08 AM

Breakin' up Nigerian al-Qaida...

Police smash Nigerian 'al Qaeda'
November 12, 2007 -- Nigerian security agents arrest members of alleged al Qaeda-linked group; Group allegedly had materials for explosives and planned to carry out attacks; Reporters shown photos of fertilizer, dynamite, a combat rifle and detonators

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Nigerian security agents arrested several men who allegedly had materials for making explosives, and evidence has linked them to the al Qaeda terror network, a senior security official said Monday.

The suspects, all Nigerians, were arrested in the states of Kano, Kaduna and Yobe, located in the country's predominantly Muslim north, said Ado Muazu, spokesman for Nigeria's special state security police. "Investigations show they have links to the al Qaeda network," Muazu said, without elaborating or saying exactly how many suspects were detained.

Many of those arrested in the current security operation are connected to a Nigerian Taliban group -- formed around students in northeastern Yobe and Borno states -- which came into prominence in 2004 after they engaged the security forces in battles, Muazu said.

The group was on the verge of carrying out attacks when they arrested, Muazu said, showing reporters a photograph with four bags of fertilizer, seven sticks dynamite, a combat rifle and detonators allegedly seized from the group.

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waltky · 12-04-2007, 09:05 AM

Some background on Nigeria...

Lights out for oil-rich Nigeria
December 4 2007: Nigeria has more oil than any other African country. But it can't keep the lights on.

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The Egbin Thermal Power Station, a few miles outside Lagos, is Nigeria's largest generating plant, with a capacity of 1,320 megawatts. It has six units, but two have been cannibalized to repair the remaining four, and at peak hours only two turbines are functioning. On bad days, like the first week in November, when the gas supply line was sabotaged, the plant shuts down altogether. Not surprisingly, morale is low. "We are told of massive funding, but the funding never gets here," says Akintoye, an engineer at the plant. "We don't have spare parts. The contractors who built the plant are not given the maintenance contracts, which are determined by the regime in power. Even if we are operating optimally we can't serve Lagos, with a population of ten million."

So it goes in Africa's largest city, in a country with more oil than any other on the continent. For large parts of the day, Lagos is without power. After 8 P.M., darkness reigns. At best Nigeria generates 4,000 megawatts of electricity for its 140 million people, one-tenth of what South Africa produces for a population one-third as large. Most businesses in Nigeria, large and small, get around the problem by generating their own electricity and using the national grid only as a backup. Foreign investors are told to BYOI - bring your own infrastructure.

When MTN, a South African mobile-phone company, set up shop in Nigeria, it had to install 6,000 generators to supply its base stations for up to 19 hours a day. The company, now the largest mobile-phone provider in Nigeria, spends $5.5 million a month just on diesel fuel to run its generators. "We rely on generating plants as our primary source of power," says Wale Goodluck, MTN Nigeria's manager for regulatory affairs. The same is true for small businesses. Barbers, welders, and bakers all rely on their own power supplies, which is three times costlier and far more polluting than getting electricity from the national supply system. "I can employ 50 more tailors, but the power outage is wrecking my business," says Okorie Idika, who owns a shop that makes babariga, traditional garments. "I can't run this operation on generating plants. I won't be competitive."

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waltky · 04-20-2008, 12:42 AM

Strife in Nigerian drivin' up the price of oil...

Nigerian Oil Region in Turmoil as Militants Threaten More Attacks
19 April 2008 : Western-based oil company Royal Dutch Shell says it hopes to quickly repair and resume production in an oil pipeline in Nigeria's Niger Delta region that was attacked by militants Friday.

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Pressure groups in Nigeria's Niger Delta warn Friday's attack could ignite another round of violence in the volatile region. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the main militant group that claimed responsibility for the blast, says it plans more attacks. Several issues are driving tensions in the region. Henry Okah, a leader of The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, is being tried in a secret court for treason. Militants are also blaming the military for the destruction of some 20 houses in the Opuama community of Delta State, the alleged consequence of a failed attack on a Chevron oil facility in the area. Meanwhile, Ijaws, the dominant ethnic group in the delta, are locked in a dispute with the state governor over the election of local officials.

Udengs Eradiri of the Ijaw Youth Council, a leading pressure group in the delta, says the military is being used to settle political scores in the delta's creeks. "The Joint Task Force that has been deployed in the Niger Delta to quell the situation in the region; what government officials or politicians do these days is that when you are agitating for your rights, they will send them [soldiers] and say you are a militant. You [governor] sent JTF [Joint Task Force] to burn down our villagers. Opuama was burnt, people killed. Today there is a crisis in the area, the Ijaws are mobilizing to go there and see how they can help their brothers. We are saying we want to be included in the political dynamics of Delta state," he said.

Militant attacks have already cut one quarter of the normal two-point-five million barrels per day oil output in Africa's largest producer of crude. Militants say they are fighting for control of the region's oil wealth, but their fight is intertwined with communal and ethnic rivalries in the delta, where kidnapping for ransom, extortion and oil theft are widespread. The main militant group declared a truce after the inauguration of President Umaru Yar'Adua in May, who promised to resolve the crisis. MEND announced in September it would resume attacks following Okah's arrest and extradition from Angola.

VOA News - Nigerian Oil Region in Turmoil as Militants Threaten More Attacks

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Somali pirates seize Spanish boat
Sunday, 20 April 2008 - A Spanish fishing boat with 26 crew on board has been seized by pirates off Somalia, officials in Spain say.

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They say the Playa de Bakio - a Basque tuna boat - was attacked about 250 miles (400km) off the coast. A source from the Basque regional government said the boat was in "international waters". The fate of the crew is unknown. Somali coastal waters are among the most hazardous in the world, despite the presence of US navy patrols.

Grenade launchers

A source from the Basque government's Agriculture, Fisheries and Food department told Spanish news agency Efe that four armed pirates took control of the boat using grenade launchers. The source said the crew was made up of 13 Africans and 13 Spaniards, and the boat suffered "some damage" in the attack but is "navigable". The boat is currently heading towards Somalia, the source added.

It comes a few days after a Paris court charged six Somalis with taking a French luxury yacht's crew hostage earlier this month. The yacht's 30-member crew were held hostage for a week but released after its owners apparently paid a ransom of $2m (£1m; 1.3m euros). The pirates were then picked up by French commandos in a helicopter raid.

Last year, more than 25 ships were seized by pirates in Somali coastal waters. Somalia has not had an effective central government for more than 17 years and is plagued by insecurity.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Somali pirates seize Spanish boat

waltky · 04-28-2008, 07:40 AM

Nigeria got too many problems already...

Nigeria faces uphill struggle as piracy 'spirals out of control'
23 April 2008 - When a bulk carrier was boarded by knife-wielding robbers off Lagos in the early hours of 14 April, it was just the latest in a long line of violent attacks in Nigerian waters that have put the international shipping community at a state of high alert.

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Last year, two seafarers were killed - with dozens more injured, taken hostage or kidnapped - in Nigerian waters as the number of actual and attempted pirate attacks reported to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) rocketed from 12 in 2006 to 42 in 2007. The figures were unveiled in the IMB's 2007 annual report, 'Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships', which was published in January this year. Speaking to Jane's soon afterwards, the bureau's director, Captain Pottengal Mukundan, blamed a "lack of proper law enforcement" and said there was "really no excuse" for the Nigerian Navy's (NN's) failure to "deal with this problem effectively".

In the first three months of 2008, the IMB tracked 10 incidents in Nigerian waters - more than 20 per cent of the global total - and warned in April that violence was "spiralling out of control". The IMB blames the miltant group MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) for the escalation in the frequency of attacks. However, back in September 2007, the NN announced that it had seized 236 ships, tug boats and barges during the preceding three years, as part of a drive to reduce illegal offshore activity that had resulted in an 80 per cent reduction in crude oil thefts. Responding to the latest statistics from the IMB's Kuala Lumpur-based Piracy Reporting Centre, the NN now insists that it is doing its best with limited resources - in particular a lack of suitable vessels.

"It is a fact that the Nigerian Navy is experiencing an acute shortage of patrol boats for anti-piracy operations," Captain Henry Babalola, the navy's director of information, told Jane's. The area the NN has to patrol is not inconsiderable: Nigeria's coastal waters stretch over 500 miles (805 km) from the border with Cameroon in the east to the border with Benin a few miles west of Lagos. The Niger Delta, which divides the southeastern and southwestern coasts, consists of more than 3,000 rivers, rivulets, entrances and lakes.

Nigeria faces uphill struggle as piracy 'spirals out of control' - Jane's Defence News

waltky · 10-04-2008, 11:25 AM

Habib forgets to bring the long ladder...

Somalia: Four pirate attacks in 24 hours
4 Oct.`08 - There have been four failed pirate attacks in the last 24 hours off Somalia; Attacks come despite presence of six American warships; Eight European countries have offered to help form an anti-piracy force

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There have been four failed pirate attacks in the last 24 hours off the lawless Somali coast despite the presence of six American warships guarding a hijacked ship full of weapons, a U.S. Navy spokeswoman said Saturday. Navy Cmdr. Jane Campbell, from the 5th Fleet in Bahrain, says three attacks were averted because crew members escaped at high speed. Another attack was foiled because the pirates were badly prepared: The ladder they had brought to climb on to the ship was too short.

The Navy says three of the attacks were in the heavily patrolled corridor within the Gulf of Aden. The location of another was not precisely known but was somewhere off the Somali coast. Last week's attack on a Ukrainian ship laden with 33 Soviet-designed tanks and weapons has focused international attention on piracy in Somalia. American officials have expressed fears the weapons onboard the MV Faina could fall into the hands of Somalia's al Qaeda-linked Islamic insurgency.

Eight European countries have offered to help form an anti-piracy force. On Friday, Russia called for greater efforts to protect the Gulf of Aden waters, one of the world's most important shipping lanes. There have been nearly 70 pirate attacks this year and some 26 ships successfully hijacked.

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waltky · 10-26-2008, 12:51 PM

Can NATO do the job?

Will NATO Navies Stop Somali Pirates?
Friday, Oct. 24, 2008 - France notched an important victory against the pirates who plague commercial shipping off the Horn of Africa, when it arrested nine of them at sea during a raid near the Gulf of Aden.

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But the roots of Somalia's piracy problem lie in the breakdown of state authority on land, which is why many questioned just how effective the French Naval action — or the NATO patrols due to begin in the coming days — will be in curbing the pirates. The nine nabbed by the French, after all, were stripped of their weapons and then handed over to the very Somali authorities who have failed to keep them under control in the first place. "After obtaining assurances from the local officials in Somalia that they'd be put on trial and that their human rights would be respected, we delivered them to the custody of local authorities," said French Defense Ministry spokesman General Christian Baptiste. "This operation is sending a message to pirates in the region that continuing their activity will be getting more dangerous and expensive for them."

Perhaps, but only if the authorities in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland keep their end of the deal. And a look at the track record on controlling piracy of the authorities in Puntland and elsewhere in Somalia does little to inspire confidence. The pirates operate their increasingly lucrative industry with impunity from a number of fishing villages along the Puntland coast, where they currently hold at least 12 vessels, and more than 200 of their crew members, awaiting ransom payments. The best known of these is the Ukrainian freighter MV Faina, and its cargo of tanks and other weapons, hijacked almost a month ago, although some 73 vessels have been captured this year netting the pirates as much as $30 million in ransom payments.

Somalia has been a failed state since its degeneration into clan warfare in the 1990s following the death of the dictator of General Mohammed Siad Barre. Today, it is ruled by a fragile coalition of warlords kept in place by the Ethiopian army, which invaded with U.S. backing to drove out an Islamist authority that had, ironically, managed to tamp down piracy, but was also harboring wanted al-Qaeda figures. And some of the warlords in the current government are accused by international observers of being the real commanders of Puntland's half-dozen main pirate groups. "Most of [the pirates] are linked to warlords," Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenya-based Seafarers' Assistance Program, told reporters last April. "And the warlords are linked to the [government], all the way to the top."

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waltky · 11-02-2008, 04:50 AM

Say what???...

Pirates protected from EU task force by human rights
01 Nov 2008 - A new EU naval task force will be unable to take tough action against Somali pirates because it must respect their human rights, its commander has admitted.

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The pirates of old at least knew where they stood if captured - they would be jailed and hung, or possibly made to walk the plank. But those policing the high seas today have no such potent sanctions to impose on 21st century buccanneers, as the human rights of the successors to Blackbeard and Captain Kidd are being put first.

The European Union's first naval task force is due to arrive next month in the Gulf of Aden to combat the region's unprecedented piracy scourge, which is being fuelled by the demand for cash and weapons in lawless Somalia. Ten EU countries, including Britain, have pledged support for the force - yet they may find it difficult even to make an arrest. "In the old days, when the navy would catch a pirate, they would tie his hands and feet and throw him back in the sea," said Captain Andres Breijo, the Spanish head of the new anti-piracy mission, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. "Now they have human rights."

Somalia is a "failed state", Capt Beijo added, and the West fears that if the pirates were handed over to the Somali authorities they would be tortured or executed. Instead, his task force will only be permitted to keep a protective watch over merchant ships in the pirate-infested waters, which punctuate one of the world's most important trade routes between the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal. Despite the presence of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Royal Navy vessels also in the vicinity, dozens of ships have been hijacked this year, including a Ukrainian vessel carrying battle tanks and World Food Programme vessels delivering humanitarian aid to the heavily armed pirates' war-torn homeland.

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In Somalia, pirates live like kings
1 Nov 2008, This may be one of the most dangerous towns in Somalia, a place where you can get kidnapped faster than you can wipe the sweat off your brow. But it is also one of the most prosperous.

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Money changers walk around with thick wads of hundred-dollar bills. Palatial new houses are rising up next to tin-roofed shanties. Men in jail reminisce, with a twinkle in their eyes, about their days living like kings. This is the story of Somalia's booming, not-so-underground pirate economy. The country is in chaos, countless children are starving and people are killing one another. But one particular line of work — piracy — seems to be benefiting quite openly from all this lawlessness and desperation. This year, Somali officials say, pirate profits are on track to reach a record $50 million, all of it tax free.

More than 75 vessels have been attacked this year, far more than any other year in recent memory. About a dozen have been set upon in the past month alone. The pirates use fast-moving skiffs to pull alongside their prey and scamper on board with ladders. Once on deck, they hold the crew at gunpoint until a ransom is paid, usually $1m to $2m. In Somalia, it seems, crime does pay. Actually, it is one of the few industries that does. "All you need is three guys and a little boat, and the next day you're millionaires," said Abdullahi Omar Qawden, an ex-captain in Somalia's long-defunct navy.

Flush with cash, the pirates drive the biggest cars, run many of the town's businesses and throw the best parties. Fatuma Abdul Kadir said she went to a pirate wedding in July that lasted two days, with non-stop dancing and goat meat, and a band flown in from neighbouring Djibouti. "It was wonderful," said Fatuma, 21. "I'm now dating a pirate."

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