Failed attempt to capture a ship in Bossaso
(BRUSSELS2) Is history still in its infancy? The Puntland soldiers who had… taken hostage the MV Daesan, a Korean ship loaded with cement, which they were supposed to guard, were brought back to their senses and... home on Wednesday (December 19). They thus returned to the port of origin, at Bossaso, announced local media such as Garowe Online, under good escort. Two coast guard vessels accompanying them.
The North Korean ship loaded with cement was intercepted last month in Puntland waters polluting the bay. And for several weeks he had been under house arrest in the port of Bossaso, under guard. Finally. At least, we thought so. On Tuesday (December 18), during a night shift, the team of 8 soldiers assigned to guard decided to change sides and capture the ship and its crew of 33 men. The soldiers were ordered to leave the port. But " after several hours at sea " and "discussions between some of the kidnapping soldiers" and the Puntland authorities, they would have reversed their decision. They will be brought to justice, promise the authorities of this autonomous region of Somalia, who do not exclude that "pirates" were involved in this attempt in one way or another (*).
This episode is reminiscent of the birth of piracy in this region which saw some of the Somali coast guards become pirates the day the UN training program ended. It also illustrates the difficulty of training coast guards in a country which is not yet stabilized. In retrospect, the distrust of certain European countries who did not want to train Somali coast guards could be justified. The EUCAP Nestor mission, currently being deployed, has only been given the mandate, in Somalia, to train a coastal police force, capable of tracking down pirate camps, rather than a police force at sea as in other countries. of the region (Kenya, Seychelles, etc.).
(*) Another explanation could be that the crew bribed the guards to be "kidnapped", which could give them back their freedom. But this is probably fiction 🙂