RESCUED CAPTAIN
Captain Richard Phillips arrived in the port of Mombasa aboard the USS Bainbridge, the warship behind his rescue last weekend, as the 19 US crew members from his ship, the Maersk Alabama, separately returned home.
Mombasa port police commander Ayub Gitonga confirmed Phillips was on the Bainbridge along with a fourth pirate, who survived the rescue operation in which three of his fellow bandits were killed by snipers.
Asked whether the surviving pirate would be tried in Kenya, Gitonga said: “The decision is yet to be made.”
Crew members from the Danish-operated Maersk Alabama were flown to an air base outside Washington and greeted by family and friends in the early morning hours after being in Mombasa since the vessel docked there on Saturday.
Pirates had attacked their ship in the Indian Ocean on April 8 and took Phillips hostage on a lifeboat after his crew managed to overpower the bandits.
After the US navy operation that rescued Phillips, pirates pledged to target Americans in revenge for the sniper killings.
On Tuesday, pirates said they attacked a US freighter with rockets to “destroy” the ship as revenge, but the Bainbridge came to the rescue of the freighter, the Liberty Sun, which escaped.
Aided by good weather, Somali pirates have intensified attacks off the lawless country’s coast in recent days, with at least 10 ships seized since the beginning of this month.
The pirates have defied an international naval presence in the region to carry out the hijackings, which have wreaked havoc on one of the world’s busiest shipping routes and left Western powers pondering how to stop the attacks.
IDENTIFY
In related news, Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said his government had identified many pirate leaders but needed more resources to go after them.
Sharmarke told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that he was willing to share that information on pirate leaders with other governments.
He said he planned to fight the bandits by building up military forces and establishing intelligence gathering posts along Somalia’s coastline. But it’s not clear how that can really take place, since his government controls only a few square blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, with the help of African peacekeepers.
Also See: US lawmaker calls for return of private pirate hunters
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