Pirates free crew of Italian ship, $600K ransom likely paid

Some $600,000 in ransom may have been paid for this weekend's release of an Italian vessel with 15 Filipino crewmembers that Somalian pirates seized last April.

 

News site Somalia Report quoted sources who said the pirates released the "Rosalia D'Amato" late Friday shortly after receiving the ransom.

 

“Yes, my friends in Garacad area released MV Rosalia D’Amato, the Italian-flagged oil tanker last night, after a helicopter dropped a ransom. They are now on land and busy dividing the ransom," it quoted Mohamed Ahmed, a pirate in Bari region, as saying.

 

"We heard that their owners paid a ransom. We are now tightening the security around Garacad and Jariban because the pirates can cause insecurity as they try to share the ransom," Gen. Abdulaahi Yusuf, Puntland’s police officer in Jariban District told Somalia Report.

 

It also quoted a senior police officer in Puntland's Jariban district, which controls Garacad village in Mudug Region, as saying the pirates have released the vessel.

 

The "Rosalia D'Amato" had been in captivity for seven months, after pirates seized it some 350 nautical miles southeast of Salalah, in the Indian Ocean.

 

Its 21-member crew included six Italians and 15 Filipinos.

 

Somalia Report said the pirate group was believed to be from Dishishe clan (Daarood) whose leader is called Canbe, a well-known pirate commander in Puntland regions.

 

The report cited initial information that the pirates had initially demanded more than $7 million in ransom.

 

Puntland officials said that the Somali pirates were also holding captive another Italian-flagged vessel, MV Savina Caylyn, believed to be in Harardhere area. — ELR, GMA News