Monday, June 1, 2009

Pirates, Inc.: Inside The Booming Somali Business

Image: Personnel from the french warship Nivose (r.) inspect a captured pirate boat.
Pierre Verdy/AFP/Getty Images


From Christian Science Monitor:

Meet the modern-day brigands behind the sometimes sophisticated, always risky operations that raked in an estimated $80 million in ransoms in 2008.

BERBERA, SOMALILAND - On a blazing morning in early May, Hassan Abdullahi and eight other men got into their small, wooden boat – each armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, a grenade, and outsized hope. They pushed out from a village near Bossasso, a large port in the Puntland region of Somalia, into the gentle waters of the Gulf of Aden to seek their fortune. They would make their way west 250 miles along the Somali coast before turning north toward Yemen, where busy shipping lanes narrow near the Red Sea.

Their goal, shared by a Somali businessman living abroad who funded their weapons and boat, was to attack commercial ships and hold them for ransom.

Read more ....

My Comment: It's all about the money .... it is always about the money.

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