Mogadishu, May 04: An insurgent group vowed Monday to end piracy in Somalia by imposing sharia law, after seizing control of a notorious nest of pirates and forcing them to flee.
The pirates abandoned the port of Harardhere and sailed three recently-captured vessels off towards another base, a day after the Hezb al-Islam militia took over the town in northern Somalia.
“From now on Harardhere is one of the Somali towns where Islamic sharia will be implemented,” Sheik Ahmed Abu Yahya, a senior Hezb al-Islam commander, said.
“There will be no piracy or any kind of robbery here. From now on people will obey Islamic law,” he said, adding: “Our presence here will change the image of this town which the bandits destroyed.”
Harardhere was one of the main hideouts for the pirate gangs that have turned the waters off Somalia into a danger zone for foreign vessels, which they capture exclusively for ransom.
Local residents said the three vessels — Seychelles-owned MV Rak Afrikana, a Norwegian chemical tanker and a Kenyan-flagged fishing boat — had been moved up the coast from Harardhere.
“The Islamists, we cannot trust them. There is not one single pirate in Harardhere today,” said Abdi Yare, a pirate in the coastal town of Hobyo, some 230 kilometres (150 miles) further north.
The Rak Afrikana, registered in the Caribbean state of St Vincent and the Grenadines, was hijacked last month in the Indian Ocean with a crew of 23 on board.
The Norwegian tanker, the UBT Ocean, was captured in March with its 21-man crew from Myanmar while the fishing boat MV Sakoba has 16 sailors.
Harardhere fishermen confirmed the three vessels had been moved.
“There were three ships near the coast of Harardhere but this morning we cannot see them, they moved towards Hobyo,” said one fisherman, Abdikafar Mohamed.
“I think the pirates are afraid of the Islamists and you cannot see them in town today, they fled, you cannot reach them on their cell phones as most of them headed towards Hobyo,” he added.
Andrew Mwangura, head of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, emphasised the danger faced by the crew on board the captured vessels and appealed for restraint.
“We call upon all gunmen not to use force,” he said.
In the second half of 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) that ruled Somalia clamped down on piracy, before being defeated by invading Ethiopian forces in late 2006.
But ICU remnants fought on against the Ethiopians, who pulled out in January 2009.
The Shebab, Hezb al-Islam’s ally, was the youth wing of the ICU. Since the Ethiopian withdrawal, its target is the country’s transitional government.
Residents in Harardhere said the insurgents started patrolling the city Monday, questioning people about the pirates but making no arrests.
As of late April, the Somali pirates were holding 23 foreign vessels and 384 sailors awaiting the payment of ransom, according to maritime watchdog Ecoterra.
Armed with AK-47s, GPS navigation and satellite phones, pirates raked in an estimated 60 million dollars in ransoms last year.
They are often detained but then let go days later by foreign navies patrolling the region.
—Agencies