Somali pirates after "just money"

NAIROBI, Kenya — The Somali pirates who hijacked a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition said Tuesday they had no idea the ship was carrying arms when they seized it on the high seas.

"We just saw a big ship," the pirates' spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a telephone interview. "So we stopped it."

The pirates quickly learned, though, that their booty was an estimated $30 million worth of heavy weaponry, heading for Kenya or Sudan, depending on whom you ask.

In a 45-minute interview, Sugule expounded on everything from what the pirates wanted ("just money") to why they were doing this ("to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters") to what they had to eat on board (rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, "you know, normal human-being food").

He said, so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood.

"We don't consider ourselves sea bandits," he said. "We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard."

The pirates said they were speaking by satellite phone from the bridge of the Faina, the Ukrainian cargo ship that was hijacked Thursday 200 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean. Several pirates talked but said only Sugule was authorized to be quoted.

Sugule acknowledged they were now surrounded by U.S. warships, but he did not sound afraid. "You only die once," Sugule said.

There was a crew of 21 Russians and Ukrainians aboard, but the captain later died. U.S. officials said 40 to 50 pirates were involved in the hijacking, but only about 30 were on the ship itself.

A Kenyan maritime official cited an unconfirmed report that three of the pirates were killed Monday night in a dispute over whether to surrender. Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on the record, a U.S. official in Washington said he believed that report was true.

But the Pentagon had not confirmed the report by late Tuesday, and Sugule denied there was a shootout and said all was peaceful on the ship.

He insisted the pirates were not interested in the weapons and had no plans to sell them to Islamist insurgents battling Somalia's weak transitional government.

"Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons," he said. "We don't want that suffering and chaos to continue. We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money."

He said the pirates were asking for $20 million in cash; "We don't use any other system than cash." But he added that they were willing to bargain.

Piracy in Somalia is a highly organized, lucrative, ransom-driven business. Just this year, pirates hijacked more than 25 ships, and in many cases, they were paid million-dollar ransoms to release them. The juicy payoffs have attracted gunmen from across Somalia, and the pirates are thought to number in the thousands.

The waters the pirates ply — especially the Gulf of Aden, which separates the Horn of Africa from the Middle East — have long been among the riskiest in the world. For nearly a year, the U.N. World Food Program has relied on military escorts to ship badly needed food aid to southern Somalia.

During the past two months, as piracy has spun out of control, shipping companies say that insurance costs have risen tenfold.

Yet the Gulf of Aden is a vital east-west sea link, and sailing around Africa can add at least two weeks and millions of dollars in fuel and other costs, so shippers take their chances.

On Tuesday, several U.S. warships — around five, according to one Western diplomat — had the hijacked freighter cornered along the craggy Somali coastline. The U.S. ships allowed the pirates to bring food and water on board but not to take weapons off. A Russian frigate is also on its way to the area.

Kenyan officials continued to maintain the weapons aboard were part of a legitimate arms deal for the Kenyan military, even though several Western diplomats, Somali officials and the pirates themselves said the arms were part of a secret deal to funnel the weapons to southern Sudan.

Somali officials are urging the Western navies to storm the ship and arrest the pirates because they say that paying ransoms only fuels the problem.

Western diplomats, however, have said such a commando operation would be very difficult because the ship is full of explosives and the pirates could use the 20 crewmen as human shields.

Sugule said his men were treating the crewmen well. (The pirates would not let the crewmen speak on the phone, saying it was against their rules.) "Killing is not in our plans," he said. "We only want money so we can protect ourselves from hunger."

When asked why the pirates needed $20 million to protect themselves from hunger, Sugule laughed and said, "Because we have a lot of men."

Information from McClatchy Newspapers and The Associated Press is included in this report.