MV Sirius Star
IMO 9384198
The Sirius Star is an oil tanker shipping company Vela International Marine Ltd.. , A subsidiary of state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company, Saudi Aramco, and goes under the Liberian flag. The ship from the tanker class VLCC ( Very Large Crude Carrier ) is 330 m long, has a capacity of 318,000 tons and can carry up to two million barrels of oil. It was completed in March 2008 by the South Korean shipbuilding companies Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., Ltd. ( DSME ).
Abduction
On 15 November 2008, the tanker was at 7:23 UTC clock with a cargo of crude oil worth about 100 million euros and 25 crew on board at 5 ° S, 49 ° E - 4.683333333333348.716666666667, about 850 kilometers east of the Kenyan port city of Mombasa hijacked by Somali pirates (see also piracy off the Somali coast ).
The Sirius Star was the largest ship that has been hijacked by November 2008. You should go over Cape Agulhas in the United States. The captain of the tanker and a technical officer were Poles, one of the two Britons on board was the Chief Engineer, the other the second officer of the ship. The other crew members were from Saudi Arabia, Croatia and the Philippines. On the night of November 18, 2008, the hijacked ship anchored off the city Harardheere in the de facto autonomous region of Puntland in northeastern Somalia.
On November 18, 2008, there were initial talks between the pirates and the owner of the oil tanker. One claims to be the pirates scoring man declared on 19 November 2008 the Arab television station Al Jazeera that the kidnappers of the supertanker had demanded a ransom. However, for the amount of the claim he did not specify. On the same day was initially a demand of 250 million euros, then hawked been 25 million euros. On 24 November 2008, the ransom note said to have been reduced to 15 million U.S. dollars after the Somali Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Abdul Salam, who belongs to the same ethnic group as the pirates who had entered into negotiations with them.
After threats of Islamist ICU militias to free the ship, because it comes from a Muslim country, leaving the pirates hijacked the tanker on 24 November 2008 the anchorage off Haradhere " towards the high seas ."
NATO made no attempt to free the crew. The reason given was that the warships stationed in the region would not intervene outside of them patrolled the area.
On 9 January 2009, the kidnappers gave the ship. The leader of the pirates in Harardheere, Mohamed Said, told the AFP news agency by telephone: "All of our people have the Sirius Star are now leaving. The ship is free. The crew is free. " According to the Reuters news agency $ 3 million ransom was paid. An official of the Saudi oil ministry confirmed the release, citing the state oil company Saudi Aramco. To pay a ransom to Aramco did not comment.
According to a pirate not involved in the hijacking of a capsized boat with eight pirates on board in a storm off Somalia on the way back from the Sirius Star and sank. Five pirates drowned along with the booty. Three pirates floating reached after several hours the shore. Her ransom share was lost.