On September 25, 2008, Somali pirates seized the Belize-registered Ukrainian ship Faina, which was carrying 33 T-72 tanks and other weapons allegedly destined for Kenya, but most likely for South Sudan. The pirates demanded a ransom of $ 35 million. The crew was captured-17 Ukrainians, a Latvian citizen and two Russians (one of them, the captain of the Faina, Vladimir Kolobkov, died of a heart attack immediately after the capture). On November 16, the pirates '" catch "turned out to be even richer - the Saudi tanker Sirius Star, sailing under the Liberian flag, was captured. The unusual location of the capture is several hundred nautical miles southeast of the Kenyan port of Mombasa. The crew of 25 people - British, Croats, Filipinos, Poles. A giant vessel-330 meters in length, with a displacement of 318 thousand tons. On board the Sirius Star (launched six months before the incident, costs $ 150 million), heading to the United States, there was a cargo of about 2 million barrels of oil, worth more than $ 100 million. "Sirius Star" became the largest prize in the history of piracy, and $ 3.2 million paid for the release of "Faina" - the largest ransom. This year, in the first half of the year, pirates committed about 120 attacks, 29 of which ended with the seizure of ships. According to the International Maritime Bureau's Pirate Attacks Monitoring Center, the number of crew members captured by pirates reached 478 by the beginning of May1. The ships attacked last year and this year by Somali pirates were also flying the flags of China and the tiny state of Antigua and Barbuda. A horrific humanitarian catastrophe, Islamist terrorism, human trafficking, and hundreds of thousands of refugees - nothing has attracted so much international attention to Somalia as piracy. For decades, most pirate attacks have taken place in the Strait of Malacca. Indonesia, with its weak government and impoverished population, constantly "supplied" pirates. For a number of years, the Gulf o ... Read more