File photo of a Somali Pirate. Yahoo/AP
Three Somali pirates were killed in a battle over ransom money. Yahoo/AP. The fight broke out in the town of Gallkayo. The dispute was over the $1.6 million ransom paid for German-American citizen Michael Scott Moore. Moore had been captured by the pirates in 2012 but it is unclear who paid for his ransom. The United States does not pay ransoms and the Germans won't say either way. The pirate leader, who was killed in the gunfight, was accused of making a secret deal with the negotiators. The pirates turned away from out and out piracy due to more effective maritime patrols and have turned to kidnapping as an income source.
My Comment:
Gotta love it when pirates get whats coming to them. Greed kills once again. You would think that they would have been smart enough to divide the loot evenly but apparently not. Of course if they were thinking rationally they would have chosen a safer career then piracy. Not like there are many options in Somalia though, the whole country is a disaster area. Dozens of attempts at foreign intervention have failed. The UN, America, various African countries, all of them have failed.
The good news is that piracy is on the decline in Somalia. In a rare example of international cooperation, the Navies of dozens of otherwise uncooperative countries have teamed up to really come down hard on pirate ships. Somalians learned quickly that piracy would often end very badly for them, often ending in either death or imprisonment. And that's just the initial operation, once they had hostages and ships they had to worry about commando raids like the one the Navy Seals pulled off. Hostages are easier to come by, but they still have risk. And apparently, getting shot by your own guys is one of them.
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