This is London – the capital of Somali pirates' secret intelligence operation

This is London – the capital of Somali pirates' secret intelligence operation

www.guardian.co.uk

For the 14 crew aboard the Karagöl, a ­Turkish chemical tanker churning through the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden, it was the moment all seafarers dread: heavily armed Somali pirates were speeding towards the slow-moving cargo vessel, and there was no chance of escape.

The Turkish sailors were swiftly overpowered and the 5,850-ton tanker was diverted to a port in Somalia, where it was held for two months while its owners negotiated a ransom payment.

What the crew could not know was that their ship had been singled out as a target by a network of informers based several thousand miles away – in London. Security officials say well-placed informants in the British capital, the world centre of shipbroking and insurance, gather so much detail on targets that, in the case of the Karagöl, they not only knew its layout, route and cargo, but had spent several days practising the assault.

The attack on the Turkish ship was a sign that the pirates have turned a regional phenomenon into a global criminal business that now reaches into the heart of London's shipping community.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 12-5-2009 by grover]

If this is true then it suggests that there is far more to the piracy off the Somali coast than just poverty.

If they do have well placed connections in the shipping and insurance companies of London then by implication the planning for this has been going on for years...

... which suggests Al Qaeda...

which is something the intelligence community has expressed concerns about for some time now.

Back in the late 90's and early years of this decade piracy was endemic in the Malacca Strait and they targeted tankers... as I understand it more than one tanker disappeared and the idea at the time was that Al Qaeda was behind it and was selling the oil on a black market then taking the ships to Bangladesh for dismantling.

This could be serious.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by grover


the short version of it?

piracy is business

business is nowadays centralized.

guess where?


which again begs the question why security is a buzzword everywhere but never enforced when it's really required. how come routes and positions are available in real time with little if any effort? all of this goes to show that all the terrorism talk is a sham.

In WWII a gentleman used to sit in an apartment high above New York's harbor and watch the ships go in and out all day. He'd carefully count them, note their direction of travel as they cleared the harbor, and then send this info along to the Kreigsmarine at Kiel.

It merely drives home (as far as I'm concerned) the difference between how the United States and most of the rest of the world deal with terrorism...

Just about everybody else deal with it as a criminal enterprise which it certainly is while we go after them with the military which is rather ham fisted if you ask me... but then again given it was bush minor's policy, it doesn't surprise me how clumsy such a response is.

Kinda like trying to swat a fly with a sledge hammer.

Is it just me, or is it everytime this world has a problem, the first thing that they do is blame Al queda ?

Buisnessmen, thugs, professional criminals, government agents, pissed off single mothers, and the first group we go after is al queda.

Im getting really sick of hearing about them and their connection to every little problem we have in this world. You would think that someone with so much influence to make the world burn at the drop of the hat would have been dealt with already, and not just by us, but by the entire planet.

Now I know that they have done many horrible things to the people of this world, and they should pay for every act of evil that they have committed, but to blame them for all of the worlds problems only makes me believe more and more everyday that there is more to this group than most believe and I KNOW that they have people in the Big chairs watching out for their interests(ahem govt). The reason they arent caught yet is simple...WE DONT WANT TO CATCH THEM. We just want to act like we do to keep people scared while pushing whatever agenda it is that they have, an agenda that none of us can probably even fathom. Im getting tired of it all, and I think we deserve better than this.

I wish we had real leaders leading, but thats just too much to ask.

reply to post by grover


That's not surprising to be honest. Terrorism was sort of a 'new' buzzword after 911 in America, whereas countries like Britain have been under terrorist attack for centuries now.

Oh, and common good is spot-on. Al-qaeda my arse!

[edit on 12-5-2009 by FMLuder]

Originally posted by grover


... which suggests Al Qaeda...

Eh .. I think they'd be lopping off alot more heads on camera, you know .. to make publicity videos? They dont do any of that .. and yeah, they need to keep them alive to make their money, but still, the millions they make isnt enough to run the global Jihad, not even by a small margin. we are talking billions at that point, not millions..

Originally posted by Common Good
Is it just me, or is it everytime this world has a problem, the first thing that they do is blame Al queda ?

If we accept the story that they are straight Islamic fundamentalists, then this story from the NYT..courtesy of the Toronto Star, gives lie to the theory of Al Qaeda involvement.

Fear of God chills pirates: They're facing backlash: 'Man, these Islamic guys want to cut my hands off' www.thestar.com...

But, the waters are pretty muddy around there...

If they do have well placed connections in the shipping and insurance companies of London then by implication the planning for this has been going on for years...

... which suggests Al Qaeda...

Nope, No suggestion at all. They may now have a hand in it, but they did not before.

Piracy on the high seas has been going on before Noah built the ark.
To get accurate details of a ship, you just have to subscribe to Lloyd's Register and request details

Lloyd's

The above link will take you straight to it.

Most ships off Somalia are being held for ransom - not something Al Qaeda would do

Malacca Straights they are taken, off loaded and then either scrapped or sold, again not something Al Queda would do.

If Al Qaeda where to hijack a ship, It would be a super tanker coming through the straights of Hormuz and, at the tightest point of the channel, they would sink it. This would lock up the gulf and the flow of oil.

Any organization, whether it be Governmental, societal, organizational, criminal, etc., would necessarily have to have some type of intelligence related activities going for it. Even ATS itself has an intelligence (i.e., information) gathering function that it carries out. That is why there is so much good information being posted here. But, as with any intelligence related activity, sometimes false information or disinformation is picked up on occasion. But that part is neither here nor there. All entities have to have an intelligence based facet to them for them to help carry out what they aim to accomplish, whether for good or ill.

reply to post by Gawdzilla


Heck at least during the early stages of the war the censors forgot to black out shipping movements in newspapers . All of this was in the face of lose lips sink ships posters .

reply to post by grover


The article is a good read . Its only natural that the pirates would have intel sources on the inside so to speak . Hijacking an empty cargo ship isnt going to be very profitable . Notice how all the morons who defend the actions of the pirates are absent from this thread . Al Qaeda may indeed be being funded by the pirates or supporting them in some way as to further cause harm to the global economy .

Originally posted by xpert11 Al Qaeda may indeed be being funded by the pirates or supporting them in some way as to further cause harm to the global economy .

Here's a quote from an acknowledged expert on the subject, Canuck journalist Daniel Sekulich:

Islam has absolutely nothing to do with the pirates operating from Somalia, Indonesia or Nigeria, or anywhere else where there is an Islamic community.

He has recently released a book on the subject, and makes it clear that while advantage was taken of the Somalis vis-a-vis fishing rights, toxic dumping and the rest of it...that this is a criminal organization at work. I saw him interviewed on CBC's "The Hour, and he tells a heck of a yarn. Check out his blog, and you'll get first-hand info.
piratebook.blogspot.com...

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


I tried to reread the Star article again as I first read it late last night , but I kept getting a blank page . All that has been proven is that the pirates themselves don't have religious motives that is not say that they don't have connections to Al Qaeda or other terrorists groups . Now I am not claiming for certain that the pirates have links to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations . IMO it would be naive to think that the Pirates don't have training and arms supplied from one or more terrorist groups . The fact that a heavy Islamic influence remains in Somalia despite the overthrow of the Islamic Courts Union government by a US backed Ethiopian invasion is interesting .

Yes I would think this is a global criminal syndicate.
With far reaching ties, who knows who is involved.
They could even have insiders in the shipping company's.
The poverty side of things in Somalia just makes it easier to recruit pirates.
The amounts of money they extort are massive.

I posted the following in another thread about Mumbai...I'm wondering if the same people may be involved in this. It has a similar fragrance to things...

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
Burmah and Shell Oil have both in the past operated as a front for British SIS, particularly MI6.

In more recent times they have been linked to private intelligence enterprises, most notably;

Hakluyt & Company is a British corporate investigation firm. It was founded in 1995 by Christopher James and Mike Reynolds, both former MI6 officers. James retired in mid-2006, stepping up to the firm's advisory board, and was replaced as managing director by another MI6 “old boy”, Keith Craig who has since recruited so many former MI6 officers that it is now believed to be the biggest collection of MI6-trained intelligence officers outside of MI6 itself.[1] Hakluyt even operates in a similar fashion, maintaining a large number of "associates" around the world who form an international network of what are effectively its agents, although it insists that it is an entirely independent business organisation.

In 2001 the Sunday Times reported that documentary film-maker Manfred Schlickenrieder was paid by Hakluyt to investigate Greenpeace on behalf of BP, and other environmental groups on behalf of Shell.[2] Shell believed that ultra-left German activists had infiltrated Greenpeace and were responsible for threats of violence to its staff. Schlickenrieder had previously worked for the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the German domestic security and intelligence agency.

In 2008 the russian pro-Kremlin news magazine, Profile, reported that Hakluyt & Company was involved in a political plot against former french Prime minister, Dominique de Villepin[3].

en.wikipedia.org...

The Sunday Times has seen documents which show that the spy, German-born Manfred Schlickenrieder, was hired by Hakluyt, an agency that operates from offices in London’s West End.Â

Schlickenrieder was known by the code name Camus and had worked for the German foreign intelligence service gathering information about terrorist groups, including the Red Army Faction.

He fronted a film production company called Gruppe 2, based in Munich, but he also worked in London and Zurich. His company was a one-man band with a video camera making rarely seen documentaries. He had been making an unfinished film about Italy’s Red Brigade since 1985. Another of his alleged guises was as a civil servant of the Bavarian conservation agency in charge of listed buildings and monuments.Â

One of his assignments from Hakluyt was to gather information about the movements of the motor vessel Greenpeace in the north Atlantic. Greenpeace claims the scandal has echoes of the Rainbow Warrior affair, when its ship protesting against nuclear testing in the South Pacific was blown up by the French secret service in 1985. A Dutch photographer died in the explosion.Â

‘The company has close links to the oil industry through Sir Peter Cazalet, the former deputy chairman of BP, who helped to establish Hakluyt before he retired, last year, and Sir Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell, who is president of its foundation.Â

MPs believe the affair poses serious questions about the blurring of the divisions between the secret service, a private intelligence company and the interests of big companies. Hakluyt refutes claims by some in the intelligence community that it was started by MI6 officers to carry out “deniable” operations

royaldutchshellplc.com...

Interestingly enough, Frank Wisner, son of Frank Wisner of the CIA, who was involved in the Hungarian and Romanian uprisings in the 50s, is heavily involved in Hakluyt and Co.

After retiring from government service in 1997, Wisner joined the board at a subsidiary of Enron, the former energy company. He is also on the board of Hakluyt & Company, a British corporate investigation firm.

Wisner is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Security Network.

en.wikipedia.org...

Not sure if any of the above is relevent, but it does appear to confirm that British SIS effectively have a permanent base for operations in Mumbai. If nothing else.

Full post

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Full thread

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by LenGXV6
To get accurate details of a ship, you just have to subscribe to Lloyd's Register and request details

Lloyd's

The above link will take you straight to it.

just to reiterate this posters point, it really doesn't suggest any real level of competence to say that somali pirates have an intelligence operation stretching as far as london, it probably means someone connected has taken note of one of the many ways to obtain this generally available information.

the lloyds register was my first thought as well but there are probably others.

[edit on 14/5/09 by pieman]

Here are some more:-

English Channel
Looks like a nice LIVE map

and this one:-

Africa

So if you know where a ship is coming from, the due date in port etc, you can very easily work out where a ship is, and look, you can even buy a wall chart with shipping routes on it

Shipping Routes

Recent thread expressing an alternative view on the Somali Pirates, worth a read for those who missed it:

www.abovetopsecret.com...