Modern Day Pirates in London?

Somali pirates are guided by a London-based intelligence team, says report.

London, England Courtesy: dynamicarchitecture.net

(MADRID) - A document obtained by Spanish radio station says 'well-placed informers' in constant contact by satellite telephone, reports the British newspaper Guardian copying the original reporting by Mariela Rubio for Cadena SER:

The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station.

The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone.

It says that pirate groups have "well-placed informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centers in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made.

These London-based "consultants" help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and courses.

In at least one case, the pirates have remained in contact with their London informants from the hijacked ship, according to one targeted shipping company.

The pirates' information network reportedly extends to Yemen, Dubai and the Suez canal. The intelligence report is understood to have been issued to European navies.

"The information that merchant ships sailing through the area volunteer to various international organizations is ending up in the pirates' hands," Cadena SER reported the report as saying.

This enables the more organized pirate groups to study their targets in advance, even spending several days training teams for specific hijacks. Senior pirates then join the vessel once it has been sailed close to Somalia.

Captains of attacked ships have found that pirates know everything from the layout of the vessel to its ports of call. Vessels targeted as a result of this kind of intelligence included the Greek cargo ship Titan, the Turkish merchant ship Karagol and the Spanish trawler Felipe Ruano.

In each case, says the document, the pirates had full knowledge of the cargo, nationality and course of the vessel.

The national flag of a ship is also taken into account when choosing a target, with British vessels being increasingly avoided, according to the report. It was not clear whether this was because pirates did not want to draw the attention of British police to their information sources in London. European countries have set up Operation Atalanta to co-ordinate their military efforts in the area.

The journalist who filed the story at Cadena Ser told AFP it was based on a military report from a European country that she would not name.

She said the report had been handed to military commanders of other European countries taking part in the European anti-piracy operation Atalanta. A spokesman for Atalanta in Brussels could not confirm this.

But sure enough the British newspaper The Guardian also combats that report immediately, by saying Somali pirates can locate ships without need for a London mole. Nick Mathiason explains there that a subscription to Lloyd's List, a contact in Suez or snoops at refueling depots in UAE all help pinpoint vessel's position.

You would hardly need to be the most devious criminal mind to work out where a tanker laden with valuable cargo may be positioned at any given moment.

If reports from Spain are true and Somali pirates had a London shipping contact supplying them with precise information to target which tankers to hijack, they may have cultivated an insider at a London shipbrokers.

That is because, every Monday, London brokers compile a list detailing the exact positions of all tankers sailing in the world. The time-consuming task involves phoning every ship owner and is carried out so that brokers can work out when ships become free.

Some, however, dispute the claim that brokers are in league with pirates. One shipping source suggested London brokers were "too busy and too well paid" to get involved with Somali pirates.

A simple subscription to Lloyd's List, the leading shipping transport newspaper and website, would supply a welter of information as to a tanker's location.

There are also easier ways to assess which ship to capture. If you wanted a valuable cargo the easiest thing to do would be to have a contact in Fujairah, one of the seven emirates in the UAE on the Persian Gulf, where oil-laden ships refuel, according to shipping contacts.

Alternatively, a mole in a Suez canal shipping office would have access to which ships pass through the canal. Ships book their passage through the canal ahead of time to ensure they are not delayed. A Suez insider would be able to gain information about where tankers are heading.

London is a world centre for shipping. Many international shipping groups have their headquarters there, including the International Maritime Organization.

The Baltic Exchange, the established and self-regulated global marketplace for shipbrokers, provides an online exchange for ships and cargo, real-time freight derivative trading and freight market data.

And with the hint that the Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit provides instant data to the shipping market from any location in the world, the Guardian closes this new wrinkle in the evolving phenomenon of Somali piracy, which came from a European military intelligence report leaked to a Spanish radio station yesterday.

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, of Dryad Maritime Intelligence, however, said that it's more probable that pirates receive a list of targets from informers rather than a single target due to the ocean's vastness. He also noted that the pirates' sophistication has increased as funding from outside criminal groups have subsidized their actions.

And then he comes closer to what many analysts say: As long as the win-win-situation that stands to benefit so many exists, there will be no change.

Networks of London lawyers, key-people in the insurance industry, ship-owners and risk-management companies and their networks that operate in the piracy-hotspots of this world are not stopped to even encourage sea-shifta in Somalia or other pirates elsewhere.

Pirates demand higher and higher ransom payments and companies fill their own pockets with unethically high legal fees, exorbitant bills for negotiation teams and risk-management companies. Sometimes all the kickbacks are paid left right and center and as long the military-industrial complex, which benefits big time from the piracy complex as well as the navies themselves, which have an unequivocal chance to expand, have not reached the saturation point.

Under these conditions, the sad games will never end - unless the last uncorrupted politicians together with their voters and all the taxpayers, who have to pay for all this, finally stand up and say enough is enough and end all this. As long as there is demand for piracy - piracy will never stop.