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Somalia pirates


Should force be used to settle hijackings  

22 members have voted

  1. 1. Should force be used to settle hijackings

    • Yes
      21
    • No
      2


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Thank god for the sense shown by the US, 4 pirates dead captain of the Mearsk ship rescued.

 

About bloody time some force was used against these scum, If you keep paying the ransom demands they will keep on hijacking ships. whereas if you kill the buggers it might take a while but they will eventually get the message.

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I voted yes to the use of force, I think they should arm the merchant ships and blow them out of the water before they even get close.

 

But, in the interests of fairness, I did read this about the origins of the piracy.

 

(I would like to see some more evidence before I agree with it of course, but it does sound like it should be investigated)

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as an ex merchant navy person one of my last ships under "foreign flag" traded regularly around africa. As we often had to hang around for daylight entry into ports, we would usually keep a fair distance offshore. whyat we did have was a pump action shotgun and a copious supply of shells on the bridge. Our Irish skipper an experienced firearms handler tried quite hard to get the owners to supply assault rifles as the shotgun is really a short range weapon but he was turned down. We were all instructed in the proper use of weapons by him and were lucky to have a person with the experience.

I am all for ships having defences but feel a dedicated team of specialists onboard with "heavy metal" and the knowledge and experience required is a much more sensible solution. There are a number of companies who offer this type of service employing eg ex royal marine commandos.

 

Couple of other points the ships used to ferry nuclear waste around are fitted with turret guns 20mm canon if I remember correctly and probably other defences as well.

 

I remember having a similar conversation onboard a ship in the 1980's when the same sort of increase in piracy was going ahead, albeit maybe not as bad as now. A fellow officer pointed out something in the statistics around pirated ships. There were no Russian, Chinese or israeli ships listed, perhaps because they all at least at that time carried defensive arms.

 

As to paying off pirates the recent increases are i think due to exactly that. A hard line has to be held and while there will be some casualties it will save many more lives in the longer term.

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I'm in favour of blowing them apart - but before they get onboard.

As an ex-Royal Navy person, I think it should be compulsory to have a detatchment of Royal Marines on each vessel that has to go past this area, you could charge the Somalia governemnt for the costs, perhpas then even they would take note and do something to prevent it. Plus killing a few of them would also be a non-motivator - you dont mess with Royal Marines, I dont advokate using American Marines as they are not in the same league.

The marines could board the ships at the Cape and disembark in the Persian/Arabian Gulf returning on the next ship going back down.

Or vice versa.

The environmental damage would be minimal as the pirates tend to use small fast craft with little oil on board.

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