WASHINGTON — After days of tense negotiations, the U.S. Navy rescue of an American sea captain came in a matter of seconds Sunday when a few sniper bullets killed three Somali pirates who authorities feared were about to kill him.
The commanding officer of the U.S. guided missile destroyer Bainbridge already had received approval from President Barack Obama to attempt a rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips by force if the seafarer’s life appeared to be in imminent danger.
After five days of captivity off the coast of Somalia, with the seas becoming choppier and the increasingly agitated captors pointing an automatic weapon at Phillips, Cmdr. Frank Castellano decided he had no other option.
The Bainbridge skipper gave the green light, and sharpshooters on the fantail of the naval warship opened fire on the partially exposed pirates aboard the small enclosed lifeboat.
Phillips, who was bound and standing, was uninjured in the attack, which occurred in the Gulf of Aden at 7:19 p.m. Somalia time, according to Navy Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. He gave an account of the rescue operation and the events leading up to it in a Pentagon telephone conference from the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain on Sunday evening.
Phillips’ three captors, who were armed with AK-47s and small-caliber pistols, most likely were killed instantaneously.
“We pay a lot for their (the snipers) training, and we earned a good return on their investment tonight,” Gortney said.
A fourth man who had been holding Phillips captive since the pirates failed Wednesday to seize the captain’s cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, was aboard the Bainbridge negotiating with the Navy at the time. He had been seeking medical attention for a wound to his hand, The Associated Press reported. He was taken into custody by U.S. authorities.
After the rescue, Phillips was whisked to safety aboard the nearby amphibious assault ship Boxer, given a routine medical evaluation and was “resting comfortably,” Gortney said.
Once he was there, military officials confirmed that the soft-spoken captain had placed his own safety at risk in an effort to protect his crew, helping fight off the initial pirate attack, then later offering himself as a hostage.
From then until the time of his release, Phillips was aboard the 24-foot lifeboat and repeatedly threatened by the pirates, who were seeking millions of dollars in ransom for his release.
“His courage is a model for all Americans,” Obama said in a statement Sunday.
Obama praised the military and other U.S. officials involved but warned that although the first known hostage-taking of an American merchant seaman on the high seas in more than a century was over, the broader problem of piracy on the high seas was not.
President tested
Phillips, 53, was taken hostage by the pirates after the crew defeated their attempt to take over the Maersk Alabama, an American-flagged and Danish-owned vessel that was carrying humanitarian aid to Africa. Phillips and his captors had been floating in a covered life raft ever since, out of fuel and shadowed by U.S. Navy warships.
The captain jumped off the lifeboat Friday night and tried to swim to freedom but was quickly recaptured.
Sunday’s rescue ended an incident that was considered to be one of the first tests of how the Obama administration would deal with international terrorism. Pentagon officials confirmed that the president had approved military requests to rescue Phillips on Friday and again Saturday.
But for much of the past four days, the effort to secure Phillips’ release appeared to be a stalemate. FBI hostage negotiation experts and the military were careful not to portray themselves as being open to paying a ransom but also hesitant to close off any opportunities to peacefully settle the crisis.
By Saturday, the U.S. negotiators had persuaded the pirates to allow them to send an inflatable boat out to their lifeboat with food, water and even a change of clothes for Phillips, Gortney said. That effort proved invaluable when one of the captors agreed to come aboard the Bainbridge to negotiate, and enough rapport was built up so that the warship was given permission to tow the lifeboat when bad weather caused the seas to become overly choppy and potentially dangerous.
It was during that tow that the snipers got a clear view of Phillips’ captors, Gortney said.
“The on-scene commander made the decision that Capt. Phillips’ life was in immediate danger” after a de-escalation of the tension earlier Sunday proved short-lived.
Officials with Somalia’s transitional government welcomed the end of the hostage drama but said the crisis underscored the need of the international community to do more to help the government bolster its own security services.
“We are delighted,” Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdulahi Omaar said. “This is a capability that we need to be able to undertake ourselves.”
He said the pirates’ deaths might spur an anti-American backlash among a small number of extremists but that most Somalis would support and understand the U.S. operation.
“People are fed up with gun-toting warlords, whether they are onshore or offshore,” he said.
The identities of the four pirates were not released by the Pentagon. Gortney said discussions were underway with the U.S. Justice Department over whether the man who was taken into custody could be tried in a U.S. court of law.
Other ships, crews remain in pirate hands
At least a dozen ships and more than 230 crew members are being held by pirates off the coast of Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau and NATO. Some recent incidents:
April 11: Italian tugboat is seized with 16 crew members aboard: 10 Italians, five Romanians and a Croatian.
April 9: Yemeni fishing boat Shugaa Almadhi with 13-member crew is hijacked.
April 6: British-owned bulk carrier, the Malaspina Castle, is hijacked in the Gulf of Aden. It is carrying iron and has a crew of 24 from Bulgaria, the Philippines, Russia and Ukraine.
April 4: German 20,000-ton freighter Hansa Stavanger is seized 400 miles off the Somali coast. It has 24 crew members on board: five Germans, three Russians, two Ukrainians, two Filipinos and 12 Tuvalus.
April 4: Taiwanese ship, Win Far 161, is seized near the Seychelles islands. It has a crew of 30, including 17 Filipinos, six Indonesians, five Chinese and two Taiwanese.
March 25: Panama-registered, Greek-owned Nipayia with crew of 18 Filipinos and a Russian captain is seized.
The Associated Press
