Taiwanese Fishing Trawler Freed by Somali Pirates

By Abdulaziz Billow Ali

Somali pirates have on Thursday released a Taiwanese fishing trawler with its 12 crew members after the owners paid an estimated 220,000 US dollars, sources say. Ching Feng 168 with its Taiwanese captain Lin Hsin-sheng with his son and ten other mainland Chinese crew on April 20, demanding one million US dollars ransom. Sources say that the ship owner paid the money that was used by the crew members for their survival. The ship owner paid thousands of US dollars in September to cover the ‘living expenses’ of the crew, and in October persuaded the pirates to lower the ransom to 220,000 US dollars.

After the trawler was released, a US naval ship escorted it to Kenya to repair the ship’s equipment which had been smashed by the pirates. It’s the longest ship to be held hostage by the ransom hunting pirates in the pirate infested Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes hijacking commercial ships despite the presence of a multinational naval force.