Hijackers of food-laden ship make new demands

The hijackers of a vessel laden with food aid off Somalia's northeastern coast in June have demanded that the cargo be distributed to residents of Haradhere and the surrounding areas, where the ship was commandeered, one of the hijackers told IRIN on Monday.

Muhammad Abdi Afweyne said they had refused to sign an agreement brokered by the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) with their representatives in the temporary seat of government, Jowhar, 90 km north of the capital, Mogadishu, last week.

"Our demand was for the ship to offload the food in Haradhere [central Somalia], not El-Maan [north Mogadishu beach port]," he said. "The deal that was reached in Jowhar was not what we asked for."

An earlier agreement - reached at a meeting on 5 August in Jowhar between local leaders, diplomats from Kenya, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and UN World Food Programme (WFP) - called for the food to be handed over to the TFG in El Maan, where it would be distributed to communities in central Somalia.

"An agreement with community leaders and Somalia's transitional government to allow the release of the hijacked ship, its 10-member crew and its cargo of WFP food within days has been reached," WFP said in a statement on 5 August.

"Elders and community leaders on behalf of the hijackers agreed to release the ship to go to the Somali port of El Maan within the next three days," it added.

The MV Semlow - with its crew of Kenyan, Tanzanian and Sri-Lankan nationals - was hijacked on 27 June between Haradhere and Hobyo, some 400 km northeast of Mogadishu, en route to the Gulf of Aden port of Bossaso, in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland.

The vessel had been chartered by WFP to deliver some 850 tonnes of rice to survivors of the 26 December Indian Ocean tsunami, which devastated much of Somalia's northeastern coastline.

The hijackers claimed at the time, that central Somalia’s South Mudug region - where Haradhere is located - had been "neglected" by aid agencies, "even though it was affected by the tsunami".

Afweyne said the hijackers were also demanding for payment for "the offloading and the delivery of the food to the community".

He said the ship's agents had made contact with the captors and added that they hoped "to resolve this within the next few days".

The managing agent of the MV Semlow, Inayat Kudrat, confirmed to IRIN that they were in contact with the hijackers, and were "still in negotiations with them".