Mystery Cargo - Somali Pirates Dying Aboard Hijacked Iranian Ship
Somali pirates who have taken over a Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo have suffered skin burns, lost hair and fallen gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Reports are also stating that several have died.
Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, when asked about the situaion reponded: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”
The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.
The drama over the Iran Deyanat comes as speculation grew this week about whether the South African Navy would send a vessel to join the growing multinational force in the region.
A naval spokesman, Lieutenant-Commander Greyling van den Berg, told the Sunday Times that the navy had not been ordered by the government to become involved in “the Somali pirate issue”.
About 22000 ships a year pass through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, where regional instability and “no-questions-asked” ransom payments have led to a dramatic rise in attacks on vessels by heavily armed Somali raiders in speedboats.
The Iran Deyanat was sailing in those waters on August 21, past the Horn of Africa and about 80 nautical miles southeast of Yemen, when it was boarded by about 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. They were alleged members of a crime syndicate said to be based at Eyl, a small fishing village in northern Somalia.
The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military.
According to the US Treasury Department, the IRISL regularly falsifies shipping documents to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe shipments and operates under various covers to circumvent United Nations sanctions.
The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client.
At Eyl, the ship was secured by more pirates — about 50 on board, and another 50 on shore.
But within days those who had boarded the ship developed mysterious health trouble.
This was also confirmed by Hassan Allore Osman, minister of minerals and oil in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia.
He headed a delegation sent to Eyl when news of the toxic cargo and illnesses surfaced.
He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died.
“That ship is unusual,” he was quoted as saying. “It is not carrying a normal shipment.”
The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship’s cargo containers when some of them fell sick — but the containers were locked.
Osman’s delegation spoke to the ship’s captain and its engineer by cellphone, demanding to know more about the cargo.
Initially it was claimed the cargo contained “crude oil”; later it was said to be “minerals”.
And Mwangura has added: “Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals.”
But IRISL has denied that — and threatened legal action against Mwangura. The company has reportedly paid the pirates 200000 — the first of several “ransom instalments”, but that, too, has been denied.
That first paragraph stating: Some of the Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fallen gravely ill “within days” certainly gives reason to believe the ship may even “glow in the dark”, as someone once said. Sounds like radiation to me, but I am not a “rocket scientist”….
WOW!! Talk about curiosity killing the cat,chemicals, and Radiation both cause symptoms that have been described, u hate to think those containers could be sitting on a dock in port Newark NJ Usa and loaded to a waiting truck for later use,in connection to a terrorist event,I hope western sources are checking out those containers,and how many unpirated loads made it to their destination.
Jeez. It seems pretty obvious it’s radiation poisoning. Everybody that reads this article will probably deduce the same. But I bet all the Govts. involved will come out stating it was just some innocuous chemical exposure instead of acute radiation sickness.
Why does it HAVE to be radiation? It’s easy to confirm this in any event. No mystery there. The United States has access to the dead pirate bodies and could easily determine cause of death. Wouldn’t you think that if the deaths occured becasue of some sort of radiation poisoning that representatives of the United States would be screaming on every street corner from Somalia to the United Nations. My guess is the crew “gased” cargo containers as the ship fell. That is to say induced a toxic chemical with a short half-life. Remember the “Pirates” are simply middle men who are hired job-by-job by larger crime sindicates or corporations.
Hmmn, sounds like radiation sickness to me.
Sounds to me like the ship was a D-Con Rat Trap…and it worked!
If only someone had thought to try that earlier…a lot less pirate raids would have occurred.
Why are other news agencies avoiding this story? Are they afraid to send reporters over for a closer look? I new something was up that was more serious than just a few tanks etc. We could blow those up in a nano second if they started to unload them. The ship is surrounded by war ships. For good reason…
Radiation?
Chemical poisoning!?!?!?
What a gloomy uneducated bunch.
Its obvious to me that the poor chaps are suffering due to global warming.
From what I’ve read, it wont be long til everybody within 2 degrees of the equator just spontaneously combusts…………………
Isn’t it odd that the MSM reports on the Ukranian ship, but NOTHING on this one? I believe that the US govt has sent investigators over to check out the bodies, but they will not report this to the American people. Election day is fast approaching, watch what happens after Nov 4th
Latest information found Saturday (Oct. 4th) is several U.S. naval ships are circling the merchant ship, Russian naval ship is on the way to the same area.
Could be anything, most likely chemical poisoning. Industrial chemicals can be deadly. Radiation at that level would have killed the crew as well, so if being smuggled would still have to be specially contained even if enclosed in container boxes, and I expect even these pirates know the symbol for radiation. Haven’t you seen inside a loaded container ship? There is no access to the majority of the containers. They’d have to be specifically loaded for special access.
Upon hearing the chemical weapon and automatic weapons rumor my first suspicion was that it’s a Bush Administration set-up & propaganda move to take us to war w/ Iran before the January change of administration, but decided I was just being paranoid even though it’d be easy to do what with all the American businesses in China.
The information appears to be working in just such a fashion on some of the readers in any case. Just what we need: War on a third front with a broken military, huge tax cuts to the wealthy and a financial crisis at home. If we’d have stayed out of Iraq in the first place. Bin Laden would be in prison or dead, there’d be no financial crisis & we’d be done by now.
Instead of “I’ve heard” and “I believe” why not list or verify your sources? What one hears and believes is usually far from the truth of the matter until all the information comes in.
Pirates check in…….but they don’t check out!
Sounds like that car in the movie Repo Man ( LOL ). If you’ve never worked in a port you wouldn’t believe what goes to sea.
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