The Dutch frigate De Zeven Provincien tracked seven pirates Saturday back to their mother ship.

Chris Lawrence
CNN Pentagon Correspondent

A NATO ship receives a distress call Saturday: a Norwegian merchant ship is under attack by pirates. The NATO ship veers off, racing to the rescue. The Canadian NATO ship fires several warning shots, which cause the pirates to break off the attack and sail away. But NATO tracks down the pirates, boards their boat and finds several rounds of ammunition onboard. The NATO crew tosses their guns, ladders and scaling equipment overboard. They question the pirates and then …arrest them? No. Hand them over to a court? No. They let them go. Why? Because there is no formal procedure for NATO forces to follow once they’re actually captured pirates. NATO leaves it up to each individual country, and sometimes those nations don’t even allow crews to detain the pirates they catch. The same day that incident happened, another NATO ship operated by the Dutch intercepted pirates. The Dutch found weapons and freed 13 hostages – then let the pirates go free.

After meeting with the Dutch Foreign Minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said releasing the pirates sends the wrong message. “The minister and I agreed we will take this to NATO. If the Dutch Navy had been operating under the EU, they could have turned the pirates over for trial. NATO has not provided the authority to do that.” Clinton also said there needs to be better coordination between all the nations and organizations that patrol the Somali coastline. Right now whether a pirate stays in custody or gets let go on the spot – entirely depends on which ship grabbed him.

Keep reading

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asks Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen about pirates in Somalia.

Program note: Tune in tonight to watch Tom Foreman’s special report on AC 360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Capt. Richard Phillips, right, stands with U.S. Navy Cmdr. Frank Castellano after Phillips' rescue Sunday.

The Daily Beast

The Navy SEALS are the heroes of the hour after rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates. But the operation was just the latest in a storied history of hostage rescues carried out by elite special forces around the globe. THE DAILY BEAST brings you six of the most daring commando missions of all time.

Read more…

Pirates hijacked the American ship Maersk Alabama last week.

Shaun Assael
The Daily Beast

Somali pirates were just paid $3.5 million—the largest ransom ever—for the release of a ship off East Africa. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Beast, negotiator Andrew Mwangura reveals the secrets of the murderers he does business with.

Andrew Mwangura has the underground world of African piracy wired. Somali pirates trust him. Warlords respect him. And human-rights activists admire him for putting his neck on the line to keep sailors safe on the lawless high seas. “Andrew gets vital first-hand intelligence,” says Cyrus Mody, who runs the London-based Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce. “If a ship is running low on food or there’s been some disaster, he often knows about it first.”

Unfortunately for Mwangura, an ex-journalist who lives in a shack without running water on the beach in Mombasa, the Kenyan government doesn’t see him as a hero. On February 4, prosecutors put the 45-year-old Mwangura on trial for exposing the secret of a Ukrainian freighter that was hijacked last fall while carrying $30 million in Russian arms. Although the shipment was part of a secret, back-channel deal to arm Sudan in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, Mwangura is the one accused of breaking the law. The government has charged him with releasing “alarming information.” Says the activist, “They have no evidence. What I said was the truth.”

Read more…

The same tactic that defeated the German U-boats could work today.

Peter D. Zimmerman
The Wall Street Journal

Piracy never really disappeared; it plagues maritime commerce as much today as it did in the Caribbean in the 18th century and on the Barbary Coast in the 19th century. But until recently, modern-day pirates mostly rustled some cargo and let their captives continue, leaving the crew unharmed.

That’s changed. Pirates in the waters off Somalia, and from the Gulf of Aden to south of the equator, are no longer simply interested in seizing ships and cargo. Now they are out for the multimillion dollar ransoms paid by ship operators to rescue their crews. They’ve come up with a good business model, too, with a low cost of entry: a fishing trawler to serve as a mother ship, a few high-speed inflatable boats, weapons and crews to seize their targets. Very few of these thieves have paid for their crimes despite the presence of a small fleet of warships in the region. One way to deal with the threat is to revive convoys.

Read more…

Ed Rollins
CNN Contributor

A president makes many decisions, but none is more important than those he makes as commander in chief. Committing young men and women to war zones where their lives are at risk is a decision that can’t be easily reversed, and the consequences can be fatal.

The second type of difficult decision a president faces is setting the rules of engagement; allowing American troops to do their job even if that means taking the life of the enemy.

Ronald Reagan, a president I served, was beloved by the American military. He rebuilt a military crippled by the nightmare of Vietnam. After the humiliating evacuation from that costly war, we had planes that couldn’t fly and ships that couldn’t sail due to missing parts and deferred maintenance.

Read More…

The wife of the captain held hostage by pirates makes a statement about her husband’s release.

Editor’s note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose forthcoming book is “Late Edition: A Love Story.”

By Bob Greene
CNN Contributor

There is a beach in Coronado, California, just across the bridge from San Diego. It offers a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean, which is why it attracts tourists who are drawn to the sun.

I thought about that beach yesterday, when the news from the Indian Ocean near the Horn of Africa was flashed around the world — the news that the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama had been rescued from Somali pirates by U.S. forces operating off the USS Bainbridge.

That beach in California seems quite placid, even sedate. The historic, red-gabled Hotel del Coronado sits upon it — the place where the Marilyn Monroe-Jack Lemmon-Tony Curtis movie “Some Like It Hot” was filmed. The feeling of the place is one of genteel manners, of delicate tradition. You almost expect to see guests carrying parasols and making reservations to play croquet.

Read more…

CNN’s Barbara Starr has details of the U.S. Navy’s rescue of an American hostage from armed pirates.

Ken Robinson
Terrorism and national security analyst

The United States government conducted the “mother of all” Secure Video Teleconferences (SVTC) on Thursday night regarding the piracy hostage crisis off the coast of Somalia.

What’s the difference between this week’s seized vessel and any other over the past year?

A big one!

The pirates over-reached, and took as “U.S. flagged vessel” (MV Alabama), triggering a challenge of doctrine as old as the republic, Freedom of Navigation.

The Pirates also didn’t count on the crew being populated by very angry, determined ex-Marines, who fought back, and quickly retook their ship.

Currently the problem is one of the laws of the sea, and the laws of nature.

Three of the pirates made off in a life vessel, intended for deep water, not the shallow and treacherous waters of the Somali coast. The boat is currently out of fuel, and drifting. A quick glance at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web site will tell you that the boat won’t make it to shore, where according to my sources, no one wants the problems of an American hostage, anyway.

It is listing, heading north.

Keep reading