Somali pirates hand over Greek tanker

SOMALI pirates have released a hijacked Greek-owned tanker with all 19 crew safe and its oil cargo intact, Greece's merchant marine ministry said yesterday.

The ship's management company said a ransom was paid but did not say how much.

The Liberian-flagged tanker MV Genius, seized on September 26, was released on Friday and was last night about 500 miles off Somalia on its way to the United Arab Emirates.

The pirates seized the 6,765 gross-ton vessel in the Gulf of Aden near the Horn of Africa, waters that have become highly dangerous for shipping.

The Georgian, Sri Lankan and Syrian crew was safe, the spokesman said.

A representative of Mare Shipmanagement, the tanker's management company, said the pirates had contacted the owners immediately after the ship was hijacked and demanded a ransom.

"Our primary concern is the safety of the ship and its crew. They released them when the ransom was paid," Ctesiphon Koukoulas said, without specifying the amount.

He said he could not divulge details because of safety concerns for the crews of other ships held by pirates in the area. At least one other Greek-owned ship is held there.

In the past two weeks, Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates have seized eight vessels, including a huge Saudi supertanker loaded with £67m worth of crude oil and a Chinese fishing vessel, the Tian Yu 8.

Several hundred crew members are now in the hands of Somali pirates. The pirates dock the hijacked ships near the eastern and southern Somali coast and negotiate for ransom.

Koukoulas, whose company manages five ships, said the pirates keep the ships they hijack "at a secure location" on the Somali coast.

The cargo vessels crossing the busy seaway are advised by warships patrolling the area on what route to take but "the best one can do is pray that it doesn't happen to them", he said.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said yesterday that the Saudi government was not negotiating with pirates and would not do so, but that what the ship's owners did was up to them.

The same day, a radical Islamic group in Somalia said ships belonging to Muslim countries should not be seized and that it would fight the pirates holding the Saudi supertanker.

Nato has four warships, including a Greek frigate, on duty off the 2,400-mile coastline of Somalia, an impoverished nation caught up in an Islamic insurgency that has had no functioning government since 1991.