8/30/2023 0 Comments Captain phillips somali pirates![]() ![]() Nexus Consulting employees during a training session.ĭespite worries that having gun-toting contractors onboard may cause confrontations to escalate, they seem to have worked as a deterrent. The Arlington, Virginia–based security company Nexus Consulting prides itself on having deterred eight attacks and over 30 probes “without firing a shot.” Still, most companies try to avoid using force. If it continues to approach aggressively, the guards may shoot out the engine, or even aim directly at the people onboard. Now, when a Somali skiff starts speeding toward an armed merchant ship, the guards shoot off flares and warning shots. “It led to a rethinking of our strategy from response to preemption.” “Phillips taught Americans that there were Somali pirates out there and that Americans were just as much targets as anyone else,” says Michael Frodl of C-Level Maritime Risks, a consulting company. Instead of relying solely on water cannons and evasive maneuvers, companies have taken to hiring private armed escorts of former Marines and Navy SEALs. Since Phillips’s capture, there’s been a sea change (sorry) in how ships defend themselves against piratical assaults. As everyone knows (and as depicted in Tom Hanks’s new movie, Captain Phillips), the captain ended up spending days in a lifeboat with the pirates until a team of Navy SEAL snipers killed his captors in a high-risk operation approved by the president.įast forward to today, and it’s hard to imagine those same pirates getting anywhere close to a ship like the Alabama. Despite some courageous resistance by the crew, four Somali teenagers armed with nothing but AK-47s and a long ladder were able to board the ship and take Phillips captive. Back then, Phillips’s vessel, the 14,000-ton Maersk Alabama, had a crew of twenty, but not a single gun onboard. Life has gotten a lot harder for Somali pirates since they kidnapped Captain Richard Phillips in 2009. These days the Maersk Alabama would like be carrying hired guns. The Maersk Alabama's crew tried to trade Muse for Phillips but were rebuffed by the pirates.Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips. ![]() Unable to take control of the massive ship, the remaining three pirates grabbed Phillips and put to sea in a lifeboat. After he and the other would-be pirates boarded the vessel, Muse was stabbed in the hand by a member of the 20-man crew during a struggle, and was then tied up by the crew. Muse and three other men stormed the Maersk Alabama, a 500-foot U.S.-flagged container ship, on April 8, 2009. ![]() "Now he will pay for those five days and the events leading up to them." Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement after the sentencing. "For five days that must have seemed like an eternity to this victims, Abduwali Abukhadir Muse terrorized the crew of the Maersk Alabama," said U.S. Preska teared up and removed her glasses and then gave Muse the maximum permitted sentence, 33 years and nine months, citing the need for deterrence. Prior to announcing the sentence, Judge Preska read aloud from Phillips' letter and from letters written by other members of the crew about how the hijacking had affected them. "He was just as much a terrorist to them as to me." "My family had to endure the five days, worrying and wondering what was going to happen," wrote Phillips. Phillips called Muse a "terrorist," said he had endured mock killings at the hands of the pirates, and asked for justice and a "proper sentence" on behalf of "all Merchant Mariners." "I ask for forgiveness from all the people I harmed, including the U.S. government in a New York courtroom today, but instead received nearly the maximum sentence allowed - nearly 34 years in prison.Ībduwali Abdiqadir Muse pled guilty last year to being part of an armed crew that stormed the Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean in April 2009 and took its captain, Richard Phillips, hostage for five days.Īt his sentencing Wednesday morning, Muse, clad in a green shirt and khaki slacks, apologized at length for his career as a pirate. 16, 2011 — - A Somali pirate asked for forgiveness from his victims and from the U.S. ![]()
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