Thirteen arrested Somalis and the bodies of four who were killed are allegedly still being held by the U.S. Navy without having been brought before a judge. The attention of the global media and their readers is rapidly declining to zero, even though the remains of four American crew members have not been buried.
ECOP-marine says those responsible in the U.S. Navy for the fatally botched “negotiations” and the failed “rescue” attempt also appear to be taking their time to spin the spin, since they haven’t even produced a time-line of the tragic events.
The monitoring organization says even those media who initially focused on the case have stopped reporting on it, not realizing they were mislead.
It was reported that two Somalis, who were allegedly supposed to assist with the negotiations to release the hostages unharmed, were detained by the investigator in charge of negotiations.
The media assumed that these two members of the gang of Somali hostage takers had come from the yacht to the naval vessel USS Sterett.
This event was not clarified by the U.S. Navy and now, this seems to not be correct.
It now appears that the two Somalis were actually taken from the Yemeni-flagged fishing vessel FV AL-QASIM 149 used by the 19 pirates to launch the attack on the U.S.-flagged sailing yacht S/Y QUEST.
Information for this story was provided by ECOTERRA International and ECOP-marine, which serve as advocacy groups in their capacity as human rights, marine and maritime monitors on counter-piracy issues. They also cooperate with numerous other organizations, groups and individuals as an information clearing-house. In difficult cases they have successfully served as mediators.
