Iz just playing officer!!!
The pirates told them they were at sea “for fun,†the sailors said. There were no weapons on board and the Sunshine had steamed away. The Mobile Bay’s sailors began to take the pirates’ fingerprints and photographs for a biometric database.
Meanwhile, two other Navy helicopters had made four passes by Al Mulahi. The fishing vessel was about 30 miles away and carried a skiff identical to the pirate’s skiff on the dhow’s deck. But Al Mulahi was flying an Iranian flag, which made boarding the vessel politically delicate. There were no pirates visible on board.
The Navy quickly made a plan. The sailors on the boarding team gave the pirates oranges and water and set them free. But a helicopter from the Mobile Bay lingered outside of eyesight and followed the skiff’s movements with long-range optics.
The skiff headed toward the Iranian dhow.
The Kidd, a guided-missile destroyer serving as the command ship for Combined Task Force 151, an international counterpiracy team off the coast of Africa, steamed toward the dhow from 120 miles away. Several hours later, after the pirates boarded the dhow, the Kidd approached and called Al Mulahi on a bridge-to-bridge radio.
The ship asked if the dhow had any foreigners aboard. The dhow answered that it did not.
“While doing surveillance aerially, we had seen that there were Middle Easterners aboard and Somalis, and that socially they were not intermingling,†said Cmdr. Jennifer Ellinger, the top officer on the Kidd. “We could also see that some of the clothing hanging on board was Somali.â€
A brief standoff ensued, as the ship and dhow bobbed alongside each other at sea. The Somalis were hiding and forcing the Iranian captain, a hostage, to speak to the American ship.
The ship had brought many of its crew who spoke different languages onto the bridge. One of the sailors, Chief Petty Officer Jagdeep Sidhu, speaks English, Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi.
Al Mulahi is from eastern Iran, near Pakistan, where many residents speak Urdu. He heard Captain Younes use an Urdu phrase, and was given the radio to hail him.
“At first he was hesitant to answer because he was afraid,†Chief Sidhu said. “But the Somalis could not understand Urdu, and he was able finally to muster enough courage and say: ‘We need help. Please help.’ â€
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/world/middleeast/for-iranians-held-by-pirates-us-to-the-rescue.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
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