Word: ransoms
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...incidents could top 300 in 2005. Although attacks on cruise ships like the Spirit are unusual, piracy is one of the world's most stubborn criminal plagues: in waterways around the world, armed gangs wreak havoc with trade routes, interfering with the delivery of relief supplies, holding crews for ransom and stealing tens of millions of dollars in goods every year. Asia remains the most notorious region for piracy, but the waters off the coast of Somalia are fast catching up. Scores of vessels like the Spirit pass along the East African coast every day en route from the Suez...
...Western passengers. But the incident shows that pirates and terrorists share a willingness to use deadly force to achieve their aims. And since pirates make more money--the three big gangs of pirates suspected of working Somali waters now demand and often receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom, according to the Piracy Reporting Center's Choong--they are likely to go after bigger game. With their kidnapping revenues, pirates "can afford to buy themselves some pretty nice boats," says Choong, and hence extend the range of their seizures...
...said, 'This is for your own people. Why are you doing this?'" Three days after the hijacking, the answer became clear. The pirates contacted the Semlow's owner, Inayet Kudrati, 54, director of the Motaku Shipping Agency based in Mombasa, and demanded that he pay a $500,000 ransom for the ship and crew. "I told them I didn't have that kind of money," says Kudrati, speaking to TIME two weeks...
...September, negotiations to obtain the crew's release had foundered. The hijackers had increased their ransom demand and reneged on an agreement to allow the rice to be handed over to the Somali government. When the Semlow's generator ran out of oil, the pirates accused the crew of hoarding it. One Somali fired a shot through the window on the bridge. "We thought this trip was the end of our lives," remembered able seaman Rashid Juma Mwatuga, 42. In late September the Ibn Batuta, an Egyptian ship carrying cement, appeared on the horizon. "The pirates told me they were...
...know when I was coming home," says Mahalingam. He and the chief engineer were taken back to the ship. A few days later, the pirates gathered their weapons, piled into their speedboats, and abandoned both the Semlow and the Ibn Batuta. The WFP denies paying any ransom-"It would set a bad precedent," said a WFP spokesman-but the Motaku Shipping Agency's Kudrati told TIME that he had handed over $135,000. "In the end we had to give in to them," he says...