Bold Lie Turns Run-In at Sea Into Dramatic Rescue

Bold Lie Turns Run-In at Sea Into Dramatic Rescue

ABOARD THE FISHING VESSEL AL MULAHI, in the Gulf of Oman — Late on Thursday afternoon, as the American destroyer Kidd loomed alongside this hijacked Iranian dhow, the warship’s loudspeaker issued a command in Urdu to the dhow’s frightened Urdu-speaking crew. American sailors stood ready, weapons in hand.
If you have weapons aboard, the voice boomed, put them where we can see them, on the roof of your wheelhouse.

Fifteen Somali pirates were also on board Al Mulahi, crouched and cornered on the very vessel they had seized in November to use as their mother ship. They had knives, a pistol and four assault rifles. But they did not speak Urdu. For a moment, the captors depended on their captives. They asked their Iranian hostages what the American sailors had just said.

One of the hostages, Khaled Abdulkhaled, answered without pause: “They said they are about to blow this ship up.”

The pirates panicked. Their unity broke down. Each man hoped, variously, to surrender, find cover or hide. Discarding their weapons, nine of them crammed into a small hold beneath the wheelhouse. Six more huddled near the open bow.

Soon, armed American sailors climbed aboard. They spotted the six Somalis on the bow, who did not resist. As more of the boarding team swarmed over the side, the Iranian hostages pointed to where the remaining pirates were hiding. The sailors pulled those men out, one by one, into the light and forced them face down onto the deck.

Al Mulahi was secured. The Iranian hostages had been saved without a shot being fired.

In interviews by two journalists from The New York Times who spent Thursday night on the rescued vessel, the former hostages, the captured pirates and the American sailors guarding them told of a drama on the open ocean: Naval vessels, helicopters and inflatable boats first thwarted a pirate attack and then converged on the pirates’ roving base, freeing 13 hostages who had expected to die.

The operation was a geopolitical thriller, as the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis, which had been warned not to return to the region by senior Iranian defense officials on Tuesday, answered on Thursday by swiftly organizing the rescue of Iranian hostages not far from Iran’s coast.

But the rescue was also the dramatic finale to a slow-moving ordeal for the hostages. To survive more than six weeks after their 82-foot gillnetter was captured at gunpoint and converted to a platform for attacks against international shipping, the fishermen relied on calm nerves, prayer, camaraderie and, in the end, duplicity.

Their troubles began in November, shortly after Al Mulahi left its home port of Chabahar, Iran, on a voyage intended to last several weeks. Its captain, Mahmed Younes, was seeking marlin, which he said could fetch about $1.50 a pound. He hoped to fill the vessel’s freezers with five or six tons of fish before returning home.

But pirates were at sea, too, and hoping for a far larger score.

Not long after leaving port, while transiting the Omani coast, Al Mulahi was approached by a smaller Iranian dhow, the fishing vessel Bayan. Unbeknownst to Al Mulahi’s crew, the Bayan had been hijacked by Somali pirates. When it came alongside, the pirates appeared on its deck, and fired rifles into the air. Now they had Al Mulahi, too.

The pirates’ intentions became clear immediately. The Bayan was almost out of fuel, rendering it useless as a mother ship from which the pirates could mount attacks in skiffs against passing ships they hoped to hold for multimillion-dollar ransoms.

The Somalis transferred their equipment onto Al Mulahi. Captain Younes said two of the Bayan’s crew members had been killed by the pirates, and the rest were exhausted and terrified. But before Al Mulahi pulled away, the Bayan’s fishermen apologized for carrying the pirates to another boat, and for the fact that they were going free even as Al Mulahi’s crew was being taken hostage.

Captain Younes, who had been captured by Somali pirates while on a different fishing vessel three years ago, understood. He knew something of a fishing crew’s helplessness when faced by gunmen at sea. He had survived 25 days that time, he said, and escaped when the fishermen overpowered three pirates on the vessel when the five others left on a skiff to hunt for ships.

As his new period of captivity began, his mind was working. He gave his crew an order: “Just comply,” he said. With time, they might get a chance.

The pirates, perhaps sensing an obedient crew, did not beat them, the hostages said. They ordered Al Mulahi to set a course to Xaafuun, a port on the northern Somali coast.

After they arrived and anchored the dhow, many of the pirates went ashore, leaving guards and bringing on food, water and, with time, more gunmen to prepare for a high-seas hunt.

Only one of the hostages, Fazel ur Rehman, was allowed onto land. He was ill. The pirates gave him medicine, he said.