Abde Wale Abdul Kadhir Muse is the first person to be tried in the US on piracy charges in more than a century, the Associated Press news agency says.

He was held over the seizure off Somalia of Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship.

Earlier, his mother appealed to US President Barack Obama to free him.

Adar Abdurahman Hassan told the BBC her son was innocent and just 16 years old.

While her son was allegedly negotiating on a US warship, naval snipers shot dead three pirates holding the captain.

Mrs Hasan said she wanted to be present in court if the case goes ahead.

She said her son had been missing for two weeks prior to the hijacking and she only realised he had been implicated when she heard his name in a radio report.

Under age

The teenager is accused of being a member of the pirate gang which boarded the container ship on 8 April and took Capt Phillips hostage in a lifeboat.

The standoff ended on the fifth day while her son was aboard a US warship allegedly demanding a ransom when US Navy marksmen killed three of the pirates.

Mrs Hassan told the BBC’s Somali service: “I am requesting the American government, I am requesting President Obama to release my child. He has got nothing to do with the pirates’ crime.

“He is a minor. He is under age and he has been used for this crime. I also request from the US, if they choose to put him on trial, I want them to invite me there.”

On Sunday, the weak, internationally recognised Somali government said captured pirates could face the death penalty.

But the Horn of Africa nation has been without an effective administration since 1991, fuelling the lawlessness which has allowed piracy to thrive.

Shipping companies last year handed over about $80m (£54m) in ransom payments to the gangs.

Teenage pirate arrives in US

Two NATO warships — one Canadian, the other British — scrambled helicopters in defense, Davies said. No damage was reported to the cargo ship and the pirates escaped.

In a separate pre-dawn attack, pirates fired rockets at the Maltese-flagged MV Atlantica about 30 miles (50 kilometers) off Yemen’s coast in the Gulf of Aden, said Lt.-Cmdr. Alexandre Santos Fernandes, a spokesman for the NATO alliance.

Two boats with about six pirates each attacked the ship and one skiff attempted to board it. The ship took evasive maneuvers and escaped without damage or injury to crew, Fernandes said from a warship in the area.

NATO forces have helped fend off several attacks in recent days, but have released the culprits because they had no jurisdiction to arrest them. In some cases, neither the pirates nor their targets were nationals of NATO countries.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen met Monday and said they will seek authority for NATO to arrest pirates.

The U.N. announced Monday that pirates had released one ship, the Lebanese-owned MV Sea Horse. The Togo-flagged ship was captured April 14 with 19 crew as it headed to India to pick up more than 7,000 tons of U.N. food destined for hungry Somalis.

But the release was not just a humanitarian gesture.

Pirates let the Sea Horse go after two Dubai-based Somali businessmen intervened and paid off the pirates, said Somali clan elder Abdisalan Khalif Ahmed. The pair had been contracted by the World Food Program to pick up and deliver the food, he told The Associated Press from Harardhere, the Somali port where the freighter had been hauled to by pirates.

The businessmen “pledged to cover the expenses of the pirates who have been out to sea for ten days,” Ahmed said.

A man in Harardhere who identified himself as Muhidin Abdulle Nur and claimed to be part of the gang that seized the freighter said the businessmen had paid “a reward” of $100,000 on Sunday.

The U.N. food agency denied any knowledge of a ransom being paid, but ships are usually freed only after their owners pay multimillion-dollar ransoms, sometimes dropped in cash from helicopters directly onto ship decks.

Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at London-based think-tank Chatham House, said since the Sea Horse had no cargo yet, it was probably less valuable anyway.

The U.N. food agency is feeding 3.5 million Somalis this year, about half the country’s people. Most food is delivered by sea because flights are too expensive and roads are plagued by bandits.

Analysts blame Somalia’s nearly 20 years of lawlessness for fueling piracy’s rise.

Years ago, foreign trawlers began taking advantage of Somalia’s civil war to fish its waters illegally and dump toxic waste there. Vigilante Somali fishermen tried to defend their shores, and later morphed into full-blown pirates.

Attacks have risen markedly in recent weeks, and brigands hold at least 17 other ships and around 300 crew.

Meanwhile, Somalia called for international help to rebuild its military to combat piracy and train security forces to track down pirates.

“We need to re-establish our naval forces so we can fight against pirates in the Somali territorial waters but also on land,” Idd Beddel Mohamed, Somalia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, told The Associated Press in New York.

“Until the Somali government has military capability to address the threat of piracy on the ground, the issue of piracy will continue,” he said.

Mohamed said the Somali government has already raised the need to help re-establish the country’s security forces with the United States and other Western governments.

In another sign of deteriorating security in Somalia, two foreign aid workers — one Belgian and one Dutch — employed by Doctors Without Borders were taken hostage Sunday by 25 masked gunmen.

There was no indication the abductions were related to the surge in piracy. The kidnapping of aid workers has long been a common problem in lawless Somalia.

Meanwhile, the European Dredging Association urged European Union governments to step up anti-piracy operations, warning that many more ships could fall prey to pirates.

Pirates captured the Belgian-flagged dredger Pompei on Saturday in the Indian Ocean north of the Seychelles islands. Belgian officials said Monday they have not been able to contact the ship’s 10-man crew or their captors.

“Diplomatic relations with Somalia mean nothing because there is no state,” said Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht. “You can’t solve this via normal diplomatic channels.”

Associated Press writers Katharine Houreld and Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Nairobi, Kenya; Mohamed Sheikh Nor and Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu, Somalia; Constant Brand in Brussels; and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

The Associated Press:

Ransom-hunting pirates equipped with skiffs, guns and grapnels took five ships in 48 hours, the two latest on Monday targeting a British cargo ship and a Taiwanese fishing vessel.

At least 17 ships and more than 250 hostages are now in pirate hands.

“There were two more hijackings today. There is one Italian-operated British-owned ship and a Taiwanese vessel near the Seychelles,” an official involved in regional piracy monitoring told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The Seychelles government said it received a distress call saying that a Taiwanese fishing vessel, the MV Winfar 161, and its 29 crew was hijacked in its exclusive economic zone, north of Denis island.

Transport Minister Joel Morgan said military forces had been deployed to intercept the pirates, amid reports that three more Taiwanese ships were trying to escape capture.

The information centre of the European Union’s anti-piracy naval mission Atalanta confirmed the hijacking of the British Panama-flagged Malaspina Castle.

“A 32,000 tonne UK-owned and Italian-operated bulk carrier was hijacked early this morning in the Gulf of Aden … the mixed nationality crew are believed to be safe,” it said.

The maritime administration in Sofia said 16 crew members were Bulgarians.

Ecoterra International, an environment group monitoring illegal marine activities in the region, reported that a French yacht was captured Saturday about 640 kilometres (400 miles) off Ras Hafun in northeast Somalia and was heading towards Somali Puntland.

The French foreign ministry said it was checking the report but Ecoterra said brief satellite phone contact was made with the 12.3-metre-long sloop on Sunday.

A source close to the investigation in France said two couples and a three-year-old boy had been onboard the yacht, called the Tanit, which had left in July for the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar.

A blog believed to belong to one of the couples onboard spoke of the risks, with one recent entry saying they had begun traveling with no lights at night.

“We are in the middle of the risk zone for piracy, however nothing to report,” it said.

An earlier post said: “The danger exists, and it has undoubtedly grown in recent months, but the ocean is vast. The pirates must not ruin our dream.”

Hundreds of ransom-hunting Somali pirates have hijacked dozens of ships over the past year, mostly merchant vessels plying one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes.

They operate from skiffs towed by pirate “mother ships”, which are often hijacked fishing vessels. Last year, their haul included a Ukrainian cargo loaded with combat tanks and a Saudi supertanker.

More than 130 attacks, including close to 50 successful hijackings, were reported in 2008, threatening the vital shipping lane and spurring the international community into joint naval action.

France has shown itself ready to intervene in past incidents. On September 15, French special forces stormed the Carre d’As, a yacht carrying a retired French couple captured by pirates two weeks earlier.

French commandos also went after pirates who had just released the luxury yacht Le Ponant in April 2008.

On Sunday, a Kenya-based maritime official confirmed pirates had also seized a German container vessel.

The ship was taken Saturday about 400 nautical miles from the Somali coast, between Kenya and the Seychelles, said Andrew Mwangura, of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme.

The prosecutor’s office in the German city of Hamburg confirmed five of the 24 crew members were Germans.

Ecoterra also reported that an Indian cargo, the Shehenshah-e-Medina, and its 18 crew were recently released by Somali pirates after being held for close to a week.

The group’s statement quoted Ahmed Bhaya, secretary of the Salaya Vessel Owners Association, as saying that the ship, which was not carrying any cargo, was hijacked on March 30.

It said that pirates captured a Yemeni tugboat, the Al-Ghaith, and its seven crew on Sunday.

The number of attacks had dipped since the start of the year, owing to an increased international naval presence and unfavourable seas.

But some pirate groups have ventured far into the Indian Ocean, southeast of Somalia, to target ships further out at sea.

Somali pirates on hijacking spree

The French naval vessel “Jean de Vienne” was on patrol off the Somali coast as part of a European Union anti-piracy force when it came to the rescue of a Croatian cargo vessel and a Panamanian ship crossing the Gulf of Aden.

The 19 Somali pirates, armed and equipped with equipment to board the vessels, were captured and have been handed over to Somali authorities, the statement said.

The incident came three days after another French vessel captured eight Somali pirates who attacked a Panamanian registered vessel.

Piracy off Somalia, one of the world’s busiest shipping areas, has soared over the past year, earning the pirates millions of dollars of ransom payments and pushing up maritime insurance rates.

The European Union set up an anti-piracy naval task force under British command last month involving warships and aircraft from several nations in the first such naval operation of its kind.

French warship captures 19 Somali pirates | Reuters

A supply ship and two destroyers departed from Sanya, on the island province of Hainan, carrying a total of about 800 crew members, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

“In addition to missiles, artillery and satellite communications, special troops who are trained for the tasks will also be on board the warships,” said Xiao Xinnian, deputy chief of China’s naval forces, in a news broadcast on CCTV, the state network.

The task force commander, Rear Adm. Du Jingcheng, said the primary mission of the destroyers, which are carrying helicopters, would be to protect Chinese merchant ships, especially tankers with crude oil, that pass through the gulf, which separates the coasts of Somalia and Yemen. About 60 percent of China’s imported oil comes from the Middle East, and most of that passes through the gulf, along with huge shipments of raw materials from Africa.

Stratfor, a private intelligence agency based in the United States, said in a report that a Chinese antipiracy patrol would afford its navy “some very real opportunities for on-the-job training, covering everything from logistics far from home and combat against seaborne opponents to communications and joint operations with other, more experienced navies.”

The analysis also said the Chinese would probably monitor the way NATO warships, especially those of the United States, “communicate with each other and with their ship-borne helicopters.” The navy will acquire new skills, it said, “under the banner of internationalism.”

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the United States Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, said the coalition would welcome the Chinese ships.

The Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said Friday that 110 ships have been attacked in the gulf this year, and 42 have been hijacked. Fourteen ships are still being held for ransom.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said that 1,265 Chinese commercial vessels passed through the gulf so far this year and that seven were attacked. A Chinese fishing trawler and 18 crew members are still being held by pirates, he said.

A European Union flotilla has begun patrolling the gulf in recent days, joining naval ships from India, the United States, Iran and Russia. On Thursday, a helicopter from a German frigate drove off a pirate boat that was attacking an Egyptian cargo ship with a load of wheat.

Chinese Warships Sail to Pirate-Infested Waters – NYTimes.com

In the first 11 months, 1,265 Chinese commercial ships passed through Somali waters, or about three to four a day, a fifth of which were assaulted by pirates, according to Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for the ministry.

“Piracy has become a serious threat to shipping, trade and safety on the seas,” Liu told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing. “That’s why we decided to send naval ships to crack down on piracy.”

Liu declined to provide further details, saying preparations are under way and information will be released at a later date.

The United Nations Security Council earlier this week voted 15-0 to adopt a U.S.-drafted text that permits all nations and regional organizations — with the consent of Somalia’s provisional government — to “take all necessary measures that are appropriate” to deter piracy.

Bloomberg.com: Asia

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on hand to push through the resolution, one of President George W. Bush’s last major foreign policy initiatives.

Rice said the resolution will have a significant impact, especially since “pirates are adapting to the naval presence in the Gulf of Aden by traveling further” into sea lanes not guarded by warships sent by the U.S. and other countries.

The council authorized nations to use “all necessary measures that are appropriate in Somalia” to stop anyone using Somali territory to plan or carry out piracy in the nearby waters traversed each year by thousands of cargo ships sailing between Asia and the Suez Canal.

That includes the use of Somali airspace, even though the U.S. appeased Indonesia, a council member, by removing direct mention of it, U.S. officials said.

Somalia Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Jama, whose government asked for the help, said he was “heartened” by the council action. “These acts of piracy are categorically unacceptable and should be put to an end,” he said.

The resolution sets up the possibility of increased American military action in Somalia, a chaotic country where a U.S. peacekeeping mission in 1992-93 ended with a humiliating withdrawal of troops after a deadly clash in Mogadishu, as portrayed in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”

The commander of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet expressed doubt last week about the wisdom of staging ground attacks on Somali pirates. Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters it is difficult to identify pirates and said the potential for killing innocent civilians “cannot be overestimated.”

Rice played down the differences between the State Department and Pentagon, telling reporters that the U.S. was fully committed to preventing pirates from establishing a sanctuary.

“What we do or do not do in cases of hot pursuit we’ll have to see, and you’ll have to take it case by case,” she said. “I would not be here seeking authorization to go ashore if the United States government, perhaps most importantly, the president of the United States, were not behind this resolution.”

Spurred by widespread poverty in their homeland, which hasn’t had a functioning government for nearly two decades, Somali pirates are evading an international naval flotilla to intercept huge tankers, freighters and other ships to hold for ransom. A tugboat operated by the French oil company Total and a Turkish cargo ship became the latest victims Tuesday.

Pirates have hijacked more than 40 vessels off Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline this year. Before the latest seizures, maritime officials said 14 vessels remained in pirate hands — including a Saudi tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons. Also held are more than 250 crew members.

Rice said the resolution will allow the tougher action needed to quell the piracy, which she blamed on Somalia’s turmoil.

“Once peace and normalcy have returned to Somalia, we believe that economic development can return to Somalia,” she said. “This current response is a good start.”

Under the resolution, nations must first get a request for an attack from Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government, which itself would be required to notify U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before any attack.

“Piracy is a symptom of the state of anarchy which has persisted in that country for over 17 years,” Ban told the council. “This lawlessness constitutes a serious threat to regional stability and to international peace and security.”

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss any possible military operations, but acknowledged there are “practical challenges” to combating pirates. He said the U.S. would continue to work with allies in the region and encourage shipping companies to take prudent measures to protect their vessels.

The United Nations also has been urging shipping and insurance companies not to pay ransom for captured ships, saying that encourages more piracy.

He Yafei, China’s vice minister for foreign affairs, told the Security Council that China is considering sending warships to the Gulf of Aden, where they would join ships from the U.S., Russia, Denmark, Italy and other countries.

Kenya’s military chief, Gen. Jeremiah Kianga, said Tuesday his country will increase patrols along its own coast because the Somali piracy has made business at Kenya’s main port more expensive. The Kenyan air force and navy will not enter Somali air space or waters, he said.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Vienna, Austria-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said Tuesday that it is important for nations to jointly confront pirates.

“Regional cooperation is essential,” Costa said. “A few years ago, piracy was a threat to the Straits of Malacca (in Southeast Asia). By working together, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand managed to cut the number of attacks by more than half since 2004.”

Yahoo! News

Their decision to abandon the two dozen crew members still on board attracted some criticism, but their British employer insisted that the three former soldiers were heroes who had resisted a sustained attack by heavily-armed pirates with great courage and would have been killed if they had stayed any longer.

“They were unarmed. They had no other option…As far as I’m concerned they deserve a medal,” said Nick Davis, a former British army pilot who runs Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions (APMSS) out of Poole, Dorset.

The attack happened early this morning as the Liberian-flagged tanker, the Biscaglia, was sailing through the Gulf of Aden from India to Rotterdam.

At 7.48am the captain sent out a distress call which was relayed to the Nivose, a French frigate that is part of the western naval task force protecting commercial shipping from Somalia’s ever-bolder pirates.

The Nivose would have taken two hours to reach the scene so it dispatched a helicopter, but by the time it arrived the six pirates had already seized the Biscaglia.

“There were three members of the crew on the roof (of the ship),” said Frederic Karakaya, the helicopter pilot. “They were hiding and signalled to us. They were spotted, and jumped into the water.

“We pretended we hadn’t seen them so we didn’t alert the pirates to their position. We dropped a coloured marker, then gave their position to a German Lynx (helicopter) which winched them aboard.”

The three guards, still wearing baseball caps and lifejackets, were deposited on the Nivose and later transferred to another French naval vessel, the Jean de Vienne. They were uninjured but have not yet been named.

At least 27 other crew members – 25 Indians and two Bangladeshis – were being held hostage on board the Biscaglia, which was reportedly heading for the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.

One western aid official closely involved with Somalia told The Times that after all the calls for commercial vessels to hire security guards it was “somewhat ironic that they jump overboard to save themselves”.

But Mr Davis staunchly defended his team. He said they had been attacked by six pirates in a high-speed skiff armed with AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

He claimed the three guards – two former marines and an ex-paratrooper – held them off for about 40 minutes, long enough for the crew to send out a distress call and seek safety below deck.

They fired water cannon at the pirates, and zig-zagged. They also used a long range accoustic device (LRAD) which fires laser-like beams of excruciatingly-painful sound at attackers. They beat off three or four attacks but the pirates then began firing RPGs at the LRAD’s operator.

Mr Davis said the pirates continued to shoot at the security guards after boarding, and that the three men had no choice but to abandon ship. The pirates then fired on them while they were in the water, and tried to run them down in the hijacked vessel.

“They did what they felt they had to do to save their lives and the lives of the crew,” said Mr Davis, 37.

The Biscaglia is the 97th vessel this year to be attacked in the waters off Somalia, where Islamist insurgents are battling a weak, western-backed government and all semblance of law and order has broken down. At least 15 ships, and more than 300 crew members, are being held for ransom.

APMSS provides three-man teams of former soldiers to protect commercial vessels, and in recent weeks the demand for its services has soared. It presently has teams on ten ships off Somalia – each costing £14,000 for three days – and only last week Mr Davis boasted that “there has never been a successful boarding with a security force on board a vessel.

As the Biscaglia was seized, Somali pirates released a Greek-owned cargo ship, the Centauri, that they captured on Setpember 18. The crew of 25 Filipinos was unharmed. It was unclear whether the owners paid a ransom.

The ships still being held include the Sirius Star, a giant tanker carrying two million barrels of oil which was seized on November 15. Its captors have warned of “disastrous consequences” if its Saudi owners do not pay a $25 million ransom by tomorrow.

Times Online

Wicharn Sirichaiekawat said the Indian frigate had attacked the Ekawat Nava 5 while it was being hijacked by pirates.

He said one of the crew had been found alive after six days in the Gulf of Aden, but that another 14 were missing.

The Indian navy has insisted the vessel fired in self-defence at a pirate ship which had been stacked with explosives.

Almost 40 ships have been seized by Somali pirates so far this year.

Earlier, the authorities in Yemen confirmed pirates had captured a cargo ship carrying building material off the country’s coast. They said the pirates were demanding a ransom of $2m (£1.3m).

The latest incident came days after the Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star, was hijacked. It was earlier moved further north up the Somali coast.

‘Self-defence’

Mr Wicharn told reporters in Bangkok that the Ekawat Nava 5 had been headed from Oman to Yemen last Tuesday to deliver fishing equipment when it was approached by Somali pirates in two speed boats in the Gulf of Aden.

The pirates were in the process of boarding the vessel and seizing control when the Indian navy frigate, the INS Tabar, sailed into view and demanded it stop for investigation, he added.

“The sunken ship which the Indian navy claimed was a ‘mother ship’ of pirates was not the ‘mother ship’ at all,” he said.

“The pirates wanted to take our ship to Somalia.”

Mr Wicharn said he had learnt the fate of his trawler from a Cambodian crew member who had survived the INS Tabar’s bombardment and had been rescued by a passing ship after six days adrift in the Indian Ocean.

The sailor was now recovering in a hospital in Yemen, he said.

Later, an Indian navy spokesman insisted that the Tabar had fired only upon a pirate “mother ship” which had threatened it.

“We fired in self-defence and in response to firing upon our vessel. It was a pirate vessel in the international waters and its stance was aggressive,” Commodore Nirad Sinha told CNN.

Following last week’s incident, the Indian navy said in a statement that the Tabar had spotted a pirate vessel while patrolling 285 nautical miles (530km) south-west of Salalah, Oman. It said those on board had been armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

When it demanded the vessel stop for investigation, the pirate ship had responded by threatening to “blow up the naval warship if it closed on her”, the statement said.

The pirates then fired on the Tabar, after which the Indians retaliated and there was an explosion on the pirate vessel, which then sank, it added.

India is one of several countries currently patrolling the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. France, India, South Korea, Russia, Spain, the US and Nato also have a presence in the region.

BBC NEWS

As the world mulled a response to the problem which has sowed panic in the shipping industry and threatens an ailing global economy, increasingly brazen pirates continued to dodge navy ships to prey on foreign vessels.

Officials from Yemen, which shares the Gulf of Aden’s shores with Somalia, said Tuesday that a Yemeni cargo ship carrying building materials was seized last week.

“The pirates are demanding a ransom of two million dollars,” said one official.

Somali pirates have carried out around 100 attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean since the start of this year. They still hold 17 ships and more than 250 crew.

The pirates — a rag-tag army of an estimated 1,500 clan militiamen and former coastguards divided into four or five groups — have been in the world’s spotlight since hijacking a 330-metre Saudi super-tanker carrying two million barrels of crude oil on November 15.

Mohammed Said, the leader of the group holding the Sirius Star who announced to AFP last week that he was demanding 25 million dollars to free the ship, said Tuesday that talks were ongoing.

“The negotiations with the owners of the tanker continue. I hope they understand the situation,” the pirate said.

“We’re treating the people on the ship very courteously and this will not change unless the other side behaves aggressively,” he added.

The ship is currently a few miles at sea, off the shores of the pirate lair of Harardhere, north of Mogadishu.

Islamist fighters controlling much of southern and central Somalia have vowed to root out piracy, but the pirates have beefed up their military set-up around Harardhere and warned any attack would have “disastrous” consequences.

On Tuesday, Kenyan officials said they had been conducting drills in the event of an oil spill should efforts to free the Sirius turn awry.

“The moment the ship was taken, it was a concern to us, because you know the amount of oil it is carrying,” said Captain Dave Muli, a search and rescue manager with the Kenya Maritime Authority.

Environmental groups have also expressed concern over the presence of depleted uranium on the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship seized two months ago as it was heading for the Kenyan port of Mombasa with 33 tanks and other weaponry.

On Tuesday, the spokesman for the group of pirates holding the Ukrainian vessel, said the ransom demanded for its release had been lowered to three million dollars, a fraction of the 35 million requested in September.

“We are running out of time, waiting for an outcome to these protracted negotiations. The owners should immediately take this opportunity to recover their property,” said Sugule Ali, reached by phone on the MV Faina.

Meanwhile, the Anatolia news agency reported that the Turkish owner of a chemicals-laden tanker seized off Yemen two weeks ago was close to a deal with the pirates on a ransom.

“We have talked to the pirates four or five times…. They have told us how much ransom they want. We have started bargaining on this amount. At this point, we are close to an agreement,” said Kubilay Marangoz, a lawyer for the YDC Maritime company which owns the vessel.

So far pirates have only demanded money to release the ships they hijack.

The top US military official for Africa said Tuesday there was no evidence of ties between Al-Qaeda and the pirates.

“I do not have any evidence that pirates have links with Al-Qaeda,” General William Ward, who heads the US Africa Command (Africom), told reporters during a visit to Nairobi.

Foreign powers have volunteered naval force to patrol the area, shipping companies have re-routed some of their fleets and private security outfits have offered their services to combat the new scourge.

But many experts argue the piracy problem will never be completely resolved if the root causes are not tackled.

Somalia has been plagued by relentless fighting involving a myriad of clans, Islamist groups, as well as Ethiopian troops and Somali government forces.

Asian and European fishing fleets have also systematically depleted Somalia’s marine resources, one of the main justifications offered by pirates who have argued they are not seeking ransoms but imposing fines.

AFP: Somali pirates push for ransom bonanza