NAIROBI, Kenya – It is one thing to haggle over a price for a pirate's ransom. But it is apparently a whole other matter to figure out who, exactly, should pay it.
Yesterday, it seemed that discord among all the various players involved – the shipping company, the ship owner, the insurance companies, government officials and relatives of the captured crew, let alone the pirates – was slowing down negotiations over how to free the arms-laden Ukrainian freighter that Somalian pirates brazenly hijacked last week.
The pirates want $20 million, though people close to the negotiations have said they have been bartered down and would probably settle for $5 million. Still, it doesn't seem like anyone is rushing to pay up.
“There are so many parties involved,” said a relative of one crew member. “It's not clear where the responsibility lies.”
As if matters were not complicated enough, one of the few people with experience in prickly pirate matters has been jailed by the Kenyan government on the suspicion he is a pirate himself.
Andrew Mwangura, program coordinator for the Seafarers' Assistance Program in Kenya, a nonprofit group that tracks pirate attacks, was arrested Wednesday night. Mwangura has extensive contacts up and down the pirate-infested coast of Somalia. Kenyan officials have accused him of making false statements and working with the pirates.
“Why is it he always finds out what's happening on a ship before anyone else?” said Alfred Mutua, a Kenyan government spokesman.
Many seamen in Kenya say that Mwangura is a good man, and that his only fault may have been being outspoken.
He was the first maritime official to say that the hijacked ship was part of a secret arms deal between Kenya and southern Sudan. Kenyan officials have denied this, saying the heavy weaponry, including battle tanks, is for their use. But Western diplomats have said this is a lie.
“Andrew has helped so many seafarers,” said Athman Seif, executive director of Kenya Marine Forum, which protects marine resources.
Last year, Mwangura helped free Seif's brother-in-law, a sailor whom Somalian pirates held hostage for six weeks.
“This time he must have said something that did not augur well with the big guys,” Seif said.
From the beginning, the whole story surrounding the MV Faina, which was hijacked Sept. 25 about 200 miles off Somalia's coast, seemed a little suspicious. Why was the ship left unguarded while sailing through some of the most dangerous waters in the world, especially given its cargo of 33 tanks, 150 grenade launchers, six anti-aircraft guns and heaps of ammunition?
Beyond that, why does Kenya, best known for its wild animals, not its wars, need so many tanks? And if it did need tanks, why all of a sudden switch from British armor, which the country has used for decades, to Eastern-bloc equipment, which is incompatible?
Those tanks are now being closely watched by a half-dozen U.S. warships that have boxed in the Faina against Somalia's craggy shore. A Russian frigate is on its way.
