[Langalibalele]

Update: Based on Al Jazeera’s report,
Indian navy ’sunk Thai trawler by mistake’

An Indian warship sank a Thai trawler in the Gulf of Aden last week after wrongly assuming it to be a Somali pirate “mother ship”, an international maritime agency has said.

Ed: Note the complete lack of any suggestion that multiple acts of manslaughter were perpetrated by the Indian Navy. The IMB is supporting lawless and deadly behaviour.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said the trawler had just been taken over by pirates when the navy attacked, a move that was initially hailed as a blow to Somali pirates preying on the region’s shipping lanes.

Ed: This was the ‘internation’ celebration I mentioned. I’m pretty sure it was one of the IMB affiliates who said ‘the only solution is force’. Who the hell is he to determine that? And who said the ‘pirates’ were Somali? They may well have been Somali but how do they know? Were they sporting T-shirts saying “I’m a Solami pirate don’t ya know?”

India’s defence ministry, which earlier released pictures of the ship on fire after the incident, has admitted that it was a Thai fishing boat but said it fired in self-defence.

Ed: The Indian Navy obviously thinks people the world over are as stupid as the people heading the Indian Navy itself. Imagine you’re a ‘pirate’. You see a huge vessel (or if at night as was probably the case, you see it on radar, and it probably launches a few flares, semaphores or tries to contact the trawler on Radio. What do you do?

a) Fire upon the ship that has the potential to blast a hundred trawlers out of the water?

b) Attempt to flee?

c) Surrender?

d) Something else.

I think on the balance of probabilities you can discount option a)

One Thai crew member is confirmed to have died when the Indian frigate, INS Tabar, fired on the boat on November 18. Fourteen others are still missing.

Ed: like I mentioned earlier, it’s likely the Indian navy didn’t give a toss about trying to look for survivors.

A Cambodian sailor from the trawler, which was headed from Oman to Yemen to deliver fishing equipment when it was hijacked, was rescued four days later by passing fishermen.

Ed: Oh Dear! The Indian Navy slipped up. You see, if you kill everyone, there’s nobody to expose your lies. The Crew of the USS Liberty nearly suffered the same fate. I bet the Indian Navy were furious when they heard someone was left alive. It seems the Indian Navy only admitted its act of slaughter because of this man who escaped their death clutch.

Noel Choong, who heads the IMB’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, said the IMB received a report on the mistake late on Tuesday from Bangkok-based Sirichai Fisheries, which owned the Ekawat Nava5 vessel.

Ed: Aaah. That may be the death fetish person who I heard say ‘force was the only action’

“We fired in self-defense. There were gun-toting guys with RPGs on it” Commander Nirad Sinha, Indian navy spokesman

Ed: What if the supposed guys who were supposed to be carrying guns and RPG’s had them to DEFEND against a pirate attack? And how was it determined they had guns and RPG’s? Did the attack take place in the day or was it at night? How was it the Indian Navy know exactly that guns and RPG’s were being wielded?

He said the company discovered the deadly mistake after speaking to the Cambodian sailor who was recuperating in a hospital in Yemen.

Ed: Ah ha! there we have it. If the poor fisherman was murdered too, nobody would be any the wiser and the Indian Navy would have stuck to its lie, like it did until they found out their lie was exposed.

“The Indian navy assumed it was a pirate vessel because they may have seen armed pirates on board the boat which has been hijacked earlier,” said Choong.

Ed: They MAY have seen it earlier? And how did they know it was being hijacked EARLIER? And if it was hijacked earlier, why didn’t they do anything about it then? This story stinks. Is Donald Rumsfeld advising the Indian Navy by any chance?

“We are saddened with what has happened. We hope that this incident won’t affect the anti-piracy operation by the multi-coalition navies there.”

Ed: Saddened my toe nails. You were trying to get away with the lie. They don’t give a toss. Saddened perhaps that they got found out. Show us your sadness, put the Captain on charges of multiple counts of manslaughter.

In New Delhi, Commander Nirad Sinha, an Indian navy spokesman, said the ship had apparently been hijacked by pirates and that the frigate was responding to the threat to attack.

Ed: Again how do they know it wsa being hijacked?

“In so far as we are concerned, both its description and its intent were that of a pirate ship,” he said on Wednesday.

Ed: What?? - They were flying the Jolly Roger, had one wooden leg, wore eyepatches, were biting down on a scimitar, had black beards and shouted “aaaargh” a lot? description of a pirate ship lobbox. “Pirate ship Model 101 - with auto swabbing features complete with imitation cannons” What a pile of crap.

“Only after we were fired upon did we fire. We fired in self-defense. There were gun-toting guys with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenade launchers] on it.”

Ed: And the damage sustained is where exactly on the ship? Again, put yourself in the shoes of the ‘porates’…. “Aaaarrggh, sea dogs, there’s a large ship approachin’ fire the guns but not the RPG’s - that’ll stop her”

There have been 96 pirate attacks so far this year in Somali waters, and 15 ships with nearly 300 crew members were being held hostage by pirates who are demanding millions of dollars in ransom.

Ed: I’m not saying there isn’t a ’pirate problem’ But this and a few other aspects of the whole thing sure make my eyebrows raise. And how these pirates think they will get away… Perhaps we’ll find some discarded videos and an abandoned Qur’an together wrapped in one of those T-shirts found in a house in downtown Mogadishu.

An international naval force deployed to patrol the seas of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden has been escorting some merchant ships and responding to distress calls in the area.

Shipping firms have also called for aggressive military approach to tackle piracy off Somalia’s coast and prevent costly re-routing of vessels.

Ed: What happened to shipping lanes? Satellite tracking? Radio communication? The Straits of Hormuz are some of the most heavily patrolled waterways in the world. How come pirates are able to operate hundreds of miles from land?

CNN (”claptrap, no news” as David Icke calls it) STILL insists of carring forward the lie. The slaying of the fishermen is enduringly portrayed as being the pirate mothership. Here’s a pic from the CNN “News Quiz”

cnn-and-the-pirate-lies

See the timestamp. And if you click on “Read the story” It’s quite different from the BBC story. It also seems to be confusing the attack on the two stories of the fishing trawler in that it nudges into the so called ’pirate mothership’ story. Have a gander:
India claims pirate ship sunk - CNN.com