Related: U.S. Behind Somali Piracy
"'Pirate' ship sunk by India a trawler; Thai fishing boat had been seized" by Muneeza Naqvi, Associated Press | November 27, 2008
NEW DELHI - The pirate "mother ship" sunk last week by the Indian Navy was actually a Thai fishing trawler seized hours earlier by pirates, a maritime agency said yesterday. The Indian Navy defended its actions, saying that it fired in self defense.
Fourteen sailors from the Thai boat have been missing since the Nov. 18 battle, which was hailed as a rare victory in the fight against increasingly brazen pirates who have rattled the international shipping industry and created chaos in sea lanes. At the time, the Indian Navy boasted of sinking the vessel and showed pictures of it engulfed in a fireball.
But yesterday, a maritime agency and the boat's owner said it was actually a Thai trawler, the Ekawat Nava5, that had been boarded by pirates just hours before.... Commander Nirad Sinha, a spokesman for the Indian Navy, defended the actions, saying the INS Tabar - a 400-foot vessel carrying cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles and six-barreled 30 mm machine guns for close combat, acted in self-defense. --more--"
That's one hell of a warship, huh?
One wonders what kind of "threat" they were really facing out there from "pirates" -- and what happened to those sailors. Isn't that MURDER?
