Two articles of interest.....
Seeking Somali pirates, from the air
By Frank Gardner BBC security correspondent
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From a desert airbase in the United Arab Emirates, a Royal Australian Air Force Orion surveillance plane taxis along the tarmac.
The 13-strong crew, part of a 25-nation coalition force, has been tasked to patrol two huge patches of ocean between the southern coast of Oman and the Horn of Africa.
It is where Somali pirates were last seen operating - and it is where they are thought to be lying in wait for their next victims.
Maritime piracy off the Somali coast is estimated to have cost the global shipping industry about $5.6bn (£3.6bn) last year alone and, along with the growing terrorist threat, it is one of the principal reasons David Cameron has convened this week's Somalia conference in London.
Over 100 seafarers and several ships are currently held for ransom in often atrocious conditions.
What started out a few years ago as a local vigilante reaction by Somali fishermen - fed up with foreign fishing fleets plundering their waters - has now evolved into a massive and sometimes murderous business.
The Navy's Mark Ray explains what happens when a distress call comes in
Ransoms run into the millions of dollars, crews are sometimes tortured to put pressure on ship-owners to pay up, and ships have been attacked as far as 1,000 miles (1,600km) from Somalia.
Vast ocean
So how does patrolling the vast Indian Ocean by air make any difference?
It is a long sortie - ten hours in the air, banking and diving - down to the Horn of Africa and back.
Flying low, the Australians record every vessel in a designated search area.
The plane has an electronic optical (EO) camera beneath the nose, producing high-resolution photographs that can be beamed instantly back to analysts onshore in the UAE and Bahrain. Sitting just behind the pilot, a photographer uses a hand-held telephoto lens to take digital photos as back-up.
"Basically we are just seeing what sort of vessels are in the area," says aerial analyst Sergeant Scott Brando.
"We're looking for any acts of piracy. The radio operator puts through any surface contacts that the radar picks up, big or small."
More on link
Somali Mohammad Shibin guilty over Quest hijacking
Article Link
27 April 2012
A US jury has convicted a Somali man of piracy for serving as a hostage negotiator during the hijacking of an American yacht.
Mohammad Saaili Shibin was found guilty of piracy, kidnapping and hostage-taking over the 2011 hijacking of the SV Quest, near Oman.
Prosecutors said he received at least $30,000 (£18,475) for negotiating ransom payments.
The incident saw all four Americans on board shot and killed.
Shibin was arrested by the FBI and military officials in Somalia in April 2011.
He now faces a mandatory life sentence, due to be handed down in August by the court in Norfolk, Virginia. His lawyer said he would appeal.
Two Somalis also charged in the case pleaded guilty last year and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Several others involved in the hijacking have also received life terms, while some face murder charges and the possibility of the death penalty.
The couple who owned the boat, as well as two guests, were shot to death after a gang of 19 pirates took them hostage in the Indian Ocean.
The four - Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey, California, and friends Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay, of Seattle - were the first Americans to die in a spate of piracy attacks in the Gulf of Aden.
Two of the pirates were killed by US forces and another two were found dead on the pirates' vessel. It is unclear how they died.
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