Employees and pilots working for a foreign security company are to appear in Banadir Court Thursday to face charges of illegally bringing into Somalia $3.6 million in US currency intended as ransom payments for ships held by pirates, the men’s defence lawyer told Somalia Report Wednesday.
The six - one American, three Britons, and two Kenyans – were arrested on May 24 at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport, and have since been held in the airport along with two aircraft. According to the lawyer, a Somali-Canadian who does not wish to be named, the money is still sitting in Somalia’s Central Bank.
The lawyer said he will attempt to have the men released on bail and have a later date set for the court case. He said he would seek permission to fly the men out on one of the two planes, leaving the other aircraft and the money as security to be confiscated should they not return to answer charges.
Britons Andrew Oaks and Alex James work for the security firm Salama Fikira. Salama Fikira is based in Nairobi, Kenya and Mauritius, and run by former British Army Special Air Service (SAS) man Rob Andrew OBE. His co-partner, Conrad Thorpe OBE, was formerly a member of the Royal Marines and the Special Boat Service (SBS). They are known providers of maritime security and other security-related services in the region..
The aircraft involved are a Cessna Citation small business jet, which had arrived from the Seychelles with the ransom money, and a Cessna Caravan single-engine airplane from Nairobi, which was modified to perform the money drops onto ships. These drops involve a GPS-guided parachute with the coordinates of the target ship steering the package onto the deck of the ship. Kenya Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that the planes had been in operation locally for at least the last two years.
The cash was to be used to pay for the release of the MV Suez ($1.5M) and MV Yuan Xiang ($2.1M). Both ships have since been released. Given that the lawyer said the original $3.6 million is still languishing in the bank, it can only be assumed that the owners arranged for new money to be made available and dropped onto the ships. With none of the companies involved willing to talk, and the government having made a very public statement about ransom payments with the arrest of the security teams, there is still a great deal of mystery surrounding the exact circumstances of the release of the ships.
These arrests were unusual as aircraft delivering ransom monies have typically been approved at the highest levels of government, as part of a tacit agreement to assist maritime nations in the safe return of detained ships and hostages.
For more information and background, please see our previous story.
Background on Ships
-August 2, 2010: Pirates seized Egyptian vessel, MV Suez, on August 2, 2010, with a crew of 6 Indians, 4 Pakistanis, on board as she transited from Pakistan to Eritrea. She is managed by Red Sea Navigation Company based in Port Tawfik, Egypt. The vessel was released on May 11.-November 13, 2010: Panamanian–flagged MV Yuan Xiang was seized approximately 650 miles nautical miles east of Salalah, Oman, with a complement of 29 Chinese crewmen. The vessel is owned by Ningbo Hongyuan Ship Management, Ltd. She was confirmed released on May 8.