Part 1: Somali Pirates - Muse

Earlier this week, a giant Saudi oil tanker called the Sirius Star dropped anchor in the Indian Ocean ... a little more than 800 kilometres off the coast of Somalia. Those are dangerous waters, rife with piracy. But the crew figured they were safe since no one had ever struck that far out at sea. They were wrong. And now the Sirius Star, along with its 25 crew members and the two million barrels of crude oil it was carrying are being held off the coast of a small Somali fishing village -- and well-defended pirate base called Eyl.

There have been three more hijackings since then. And more than a third of all the pirate attacks in the world now take place off the coast of Somalia.
Muse, as he calls himself, is a Somali fisherman who says he hijacks ships traveling off the coast of Somalia. He says he's not a pirate, he's defending his country. We contacted him with the help of freelance journalist Abdul Rahman Warssameh in Mogadishu. And because of the quality of the phone line, The Current's Kennedy Jawoko helped out with a voice-over.

Somali Pirates - Security

Now the waters off the Horn of Africa are part of one of the world's most important shipping routes especially if you want to move oil out of the Persian Gulf. So it's not surprising that the companies that rely on those waters see things a little differently. Sunil Ram has been fielding calls from some of those companies. He's a a Security Consultant with Executive Security Services International and Sunil Ram joined us today from Huntsville, Ontario.

Canada has had a presence in the Gulf of Aden, as part of the international naval patrols, but the Department of National Defense was not willing to provide us with an update on our mission.