EU: Somali pirates free Thai fishing ship after ransom is paid

EU: Somali pirates free Thai fishing vessel

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali pirates have freed a Thai fishing vessel they had held for more than four months after receiving a ransom, the European Union Naval Force said Sunday.

EU Naval Force spokesman Cmdr. John Harbour did not say how much the pirates were paid to free the Thai Union 3 early Sunday. He said the naval force was monitoring the situation Sunday afternoon. He did not say where the freed ship may have been headed after its release.

The fishing boat was hijacked on October 29 in the Indian Ocean about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of the Seychelles and 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) from the Somali coast.

Lawlesness in Somalia has allowed piracy to flourish off Somalia’s 1,900-mile (3,100-kilometer) coastline. Somalia has not had a stable government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The EU naval force works to deter piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia’s coast and escorts ships carrying humanitarian aid. But the area is large and pirates have established many safe havens along the coast where they can hold ships for long periods of time.

The original Somali pirates were fishermen aggrieved over the huge foreign trawlers depleting their seas — a complaint the international community has yet to address despite pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into anti-piracy patrols.

Huge ransoms lured criminal gangs into piracy, though, and ransom inflation has made it more expensive to buy the freedom of the more than 130 hostages still being held.

Last year, the average ransom was around $2 million, according to piracy expert Roger Middleton of the British think tank Chatham House. This year, two ransoms paid were around $3 million and $7 million, he said.