AFR: US sea captain freed in swift firefight
By Elizabeth A Kennedy and Lara Jakes13 Apr 2009 4:01 AM
MOMBASA, Kenya, April 12 AP - An American ship captain was freed unharmed on Sunday in a US Navy operation that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, a senior US intelligence official said.
One of the pirates was wounded and in custody after a swift firefight, the official said.
Captain Richard Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, was safely transported to a Navy warship nearby.
The official was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
A government official and others in Somalia with knowledge of the situation had reported hours earlier that negotiations for Phillips' release had broken down.
The district commissioner of the central Mudug region said talks went on all day Saturday, with clan elders from his area talking by satellite telephone and through a translator with Americans, but collapsed late on Saturday night.
"The negotiations between the elders and American officials have broken down. The reason is American officials wanted to arrest the pirates in Puntland and elders refused the arrest of the pirates," said the commissioner, Abdi Aziz Aw Yusuf. He said he organised initial contacts between the elders and the Americans.
Two other Somalis, one involved in the negotiations and another in contact with the pirates, also said the talks collapsed because of the US insistence that the pirates be arrested and brought to justice.
Phillips' crew of 19 American sailors reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night under guard of US Navy Seals, exhilarated by their freedom but mourning the absence of Phillips.
Crew members said their ordeal had begun with the Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.
As the pirates shot in the air, Phillips told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men, crew members said.
Phillips was then held hostage in an enclosed lifeboat that was closely watched by US warships and a helicopter in an increasingly tense standoff.
Talks to free him began on Thursday with the captain of the USS Bainbridge talking to the pirates under instruction from FBI hostage negotiators on board the US destroyer.
A statement from Maersk Line, owner of Phillips' ship, the Maersk Alabama, said "the US Navy had sight contact" of Phillips earlier on Sunday - apparently when the pirates opened the hatches.
Before Phillips was freed, a pirate who said he was associated with the gang that held Phillips, Ahmed Mohamed Nur, told The Associated Press that the pirates had reported that "helicopters continue to fly over their heads in the daylight and in the night they are under the focus of a spotlight from a warship".
He spoke by satellite phone from Harardhere, a port and pirate stronghold where a fisherman said helicopters flew over the town on Sunday morning and a warship was looming on the horizon. The fisherman, Abdi Sheikh Muse, said that could be an indication the lifeboat may be near to shore.
The US Navy had assumed the pirates would try to get their hostage to shore, where they could hide him on Somalia's lawless soil and be in a stronger position to negotiate a ransom.
Three US warships were within easy reach of the lifeboat on Saturday. The pirates had threatened to kill Phillips if attacked.
On Friday, the French navy freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the five hostages was killed.
Early on Saturday, the pirates holding Phillips in the lifeboat fired a few shots at a small US Navy vessel that had approached, a US military official said.
The official said the US sailors did not return fire, the Navy vessel turned away and no one was hurt. He said the vessel had not been attempting a rescue. The pirates were believed armed with pistols and AK-47 assault rifles.
Phillips jumped out of the lifeboat on Friday and tried to swim for his freedom but was recaptured when a pirate fired an automatic weapon at or near him, according to US Defence Department officials.
"When I spoke to the crew, they won't consider it done when they board a plane and come home," Maersk President John Reinhart said from Norfolk, Virginia before news of Phillips' rescue. "They won't consider it done until the captain is back, nor will we."
