U.S. forces uncovered a gruesome scene Tuesday off the Somali coast: Four Americans who had been taken hostage by pirates aboard their yacht were shot fatally by their captors. That prompted a deadly U.S. response.
A raiding team came aboard the captive vessel Quest after pirates shot at U.S. forces from the yacht at about 1 a.m. local time. According to a statement from U.S. Central Command, the team killed two of the pirates, detained another 13 and found the corpses of two others, dead from a different incident. The command assessed that 19 pirates were involved in the capture of the Quest on Friday, though it’s not clear what happened to the final two.
A U.S. negotiating team had tried to secure the release of the captives after several Navy ships tracked the pirates for the past three days, according to the statement. The statement said negotiations were “ongoing” when the pirates opened fire. It’s not clear why the pirates killed their hostages: After all, dead hostages bring no ransom.
“We express our deepest condolences for the innocent lives callously lost aboard the Quest,” Gen. James Mattis, leader of U.S. Central Command said. The raiding party tried to administer “lifesaving care” to the wounded Americans, the statement added.
Central Command spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to requests for further elaboration, including what’s going to happen to the detained Somalis. (A Somali pirate was recently sentenced to 33 years in prison by a New York court for his involvement in capturing the Maersk Alabama in 2009.) But the Naval assets involved in the Quest “response force” were serious: two destroyers, the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Leyte Gulf and even the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.
That’s a sign of the rising danger to U.S. ships from piracy in the Arabian Sea. Earlier this month, the chief of the European Union’s counterpiracy force warned that Somali pirates were engaging in “systemic torture” of hostages and had “shown a willingness to use violence much more quickly, and much more violence.”
His comments echoed a November 2010 United Nations report on Somali piracy, which labeled a trend of “increased levels of violence employed by the pirates as well as their expanding reach” as “disconcerting.” Statistics from the International Maritime Bureau show that eight hostages died while held by Somali pirates in 2010, a doubling of the 2009 figure.
The Quest was home to Jean and Scott Adam, who had been sailing around the world since 2004. They were joined on the voyage by another couple, Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, from Seattle.
Update, 3:45 p.m. Tuesday:
Army Lt. Col. Michael Lawhorn, a CentCom spokesman, says in an e-mail that the final legal disposition of the pirates is “still to be determined, and it’ll “have to be worked through State [Department and] FBI as well as with other countries.”
Army Lt. Col. Michael Lawhorn, a CentCom spokesman, says in an e-mail that the final legal disposition of the pirates is “still to be determined, and it’ll “have to be worked through State [Department and] FBI as well as with other countries.”
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