Tuesday, May 27, 2008
By ARTHUR MAX
Lars Walder, spokesman for the ship's owner
The crew were four Russians and five Filipinos, he said.
The ship, the MV Amiya Scan, is chartered by a Danish company, Scan-Trans Shipping, and sails under a Panamanian flag of convenience. It departed
Its cargo was a decommissioned oil platform.
Walder said his company, based in the far northern town of
The Amiya Scan was the sixth ship hijacked by Somali pirates in two months, said the Commercial Crimes Services of the International Maritime Bureau. Since Jan. 1, 24 ships have been hijacked in the
Globally, 157 hostages have been taken by pirates and released unharmed this year before the Amiya Scan hijacking, said Pottengal Mukundan, director of crimes services.
Neither the company nor the agency would discuss details of the seizure of the Amiya Scan or the negotiations.
Typically, vessels are seized at the entrance to the gulf, "an area rich in targets because it is the normal route for vessels heading into the Suez Canal," said Mukundan.
The ships are taken within
In a rare case of naval intervention, French commandos in April freed hostages on a French tourist yacht seized last month off the Somali coast, and then chased the pirates on land and arrested them.
The