Five Somali pirates captured during a raid on a hijacked cargo ship in the Arabian Sea were brought yesterday to South Korea, where they could face up to life imprisonment, the South Korean coast guard said.
The men were arrested as South Korean commandos raided the South Korean-operated Samho Jewelry earlier this month, a week after pirates seized the freighter and its 21 crew members. The commandos rescued all crew members — eight South Koreans, two Indonesians and 11 Burmese — and killed eight Somali pirates.
None of the crew members was injured except for the South Korean captain, who was shot in the stomach by a pirate. The captain, Seok Hae-gyun, was brought to South Korea on Saturday night and had surgery for his wounds.
Yesterday, the five captured pirates arrived at Gimhae International Airport in Busan and were quickly put into detention there, coast guard officer Eum Jin-kyung said.
Coast guard investigators subsequently began questioning the Somalis on charges that they hijacked the ship, requested a ransom and attempted to kill the captain, coast guard officer Hahm Un-sik said. By South Korean law, the pirates — if convicted — could be sentenced to life in prison as a maximum penalty, Hahm said.
The suspects told investigators that the dead eight pirates played a key role in the hijacking and shot the captain, according to Yonhap news agency. The coast guard said it couldn’t immediately confirm the report.
The Samho Jewelry and the freed crew members are headed to Oman.
Senior coast guard officer Kim Chung-gyu told a news conference that investigators will be sent to look at the ship after it arrives.
Kim said that investigators will also try to find if the pirates belong to a group involved in the previous hijackings of South Korean ships.
In October last year, Somali pirates hijacked a South Korean--operated fishing boat with 43 sailors — two South Korean, two Chinese and 39 Kenyans, but they haven’t been released yet. A month later, a supertanker also owned by Samho Shipping and its 24 crew were freed after seven months amid reports that a ransom of up to US$9.5 million had been paid to Somali pirates.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia has flourished since the nation’s government collapsed in 1991.
The US, Germany and the Netherlands have tried other Somali pirate suspects, but efforts to involve Africa in trying piracy cases are faltering and captured pirates frequently are released.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.