Ordeal over for crew held by pirates
America’s military exults – ‘This is an incredible story’ – after aircraft carrier loathed by Tehran leads a mission that frees 13 Iranian fishermen
An Italian oil tanker released by Somali pirates after more than 10 months has reached Fujairah port. The Savina Caylyn, which had five Italians and 17 Indians on board, was seized on February 8 last year after five pirates aboard a skiff fired on it with rocket launchers and sub-machineguns near the Yemeni island of Socotra.
The pirates released the tanker on December 21, and it docked in Fujairah on Friday night. The ves- sel is owned by the Naples shipping company Fratelli D’amato, which declined to comment yesterday.
“We are relieved. Our long wait is coming to an end. We are waiting for them to come home,” said Praseena Nair, wife of one of the crewmen, Hari C Nair.
Her husband called her in Kerala and told her of their arrival. “He looked happy and cheerful. They have returned safely,” she said.
“We don’t know when they will be arriving here from the UAE. My husband told me that they are undergoing medical checkups and are finishing formalities to come out of the ship. We are also waiting about the details of the airport where they will be landing.
“I was constantly praying for his safe return. God has answered my prayers.”
Somali pirates are holding 199 people for ransom, the EU’S antipiracy mission Navfor said last month.
Since the start of the mission in December 2008, 2,317 seafarers have been held hostage for an average of nearly five months.
WASHINGTON // For the US Navy, it was a public relations jackpot: an aircraft carrier cruising the seas in the Middle East stumbled upon an Iranian fishing vessel in distress, hijacked by pirates.
Forces from the aircraft carrier’s strike group swiftly made the most of the moment. They seized 15 Somali pirates without firing a shot and rescued 13 hungry Iranian fishermen who had been held hostage for weeks.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, told state TV the rescue was a “humanitarian” gesture by the American warship and Iran welcomes that. But the hard-line Fars news agency called the rescue a Hollywood dramatisation of a routine incident.
US officials could not stop talking about it. The Navy publicised video of the rescue and plenty of photographs, including one shot of an Iranian fisherman giving a US sailor a joyful hug.
Adding to the sweet irony was that the aircraft carrier just happened to be the USS John C Stennis. That’s the
The two republics’ navies maintain open channels of communication on a tactical level
same carrier whose presence in the region had prompted Tehran three days earlier to warn Washington to stay out of the Arabian Gulf, spooking global oil markets.
After giving the Iranians fresh provisions and fuel, the Americans bade the crew a happy farewell on Friday, along with a parting gift: US Navy baseball caps for the grateful Iranians to wear as they posed for pictures.
Navy leaders tried to sound magnanimous but could barely suppress their glee.
“It was a great outcome for some innocent Iranian fisherman, and it’s an indication of who we are as Americans,” Rear Adm Craig Faller, commander of the Stennis strike group, told reporters in a conference call Friday from his position in the North Arabian Sea. “We’d do that for any country in the world.”
Of course, only one country in recent days has threatened to close access to the Strait of Hormuz, the bottleneck through which almost one-fifth of the world’s oil supply flows. And only one country issued a warning to the United States not to send an aircraft carrier back to the Gulf after the Stennis sailed away last week.
After Friday’s turn of events, the Pentagon distributed a picture of the defence secretary Leon Panetta phoning his personal congratulations to Adm Faller, who broke away from his chat with journalists to take the call. The state department gushed. “This is an incredible story. This is a great story,” the state department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “The very same ships and set of vessels that the Iranians protested on its last voyage through Hormuz, the John C Stennis Carrier Strike Group, just rescued this Iranian dhow from pirates.”
Despite the tensions between Tehran and Washington, their navies maintain open channels of communication on a tactical level, said Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said the US Navy has repeatedly rescued Iranian nationals in the region and handed them over to the Iranian navy, with little fanfare. Fishermen and other seafarers, after all, routinely find themselves in need of rescue, whether because of bad weather or because they have simply become stranded at sea.
US officials, Mr Zenko said, seemed eager to convey that a US naval presence in the region can benefit even Iran.
US Navy officials said the rescue began on Thursday morning in the Arabian Sea, about 280 kilometres south-east of Muscat. The Stennis and its strike group, which were supporting air combat operations over Afghanistan, received a distress call from another merchant vessel that feared it was about to be boarded by pirates.
The Navy intervened with a heli- copter and followed the suspected pirates back to the Al Molai, an Iranian-flagged fishing dhow. The USS Kidd, a guided- missile destroyer, assisted by the USS Mobile Bay, a Ticonderoga- class cruiser, made contact with the crew and discovered they had been held hostage by pirates for about 45 days.
Once the pirates found out that the Navy was on to them, they tried to hide aboard the Iranian ship and ultimately surrendered without a shot, US officials said. They are being detained aboard the Stennis. The Navy said the Obama administration will determine if they should be prosecuted and by whom.