Pirates attacked the captain and five crew members of a fishing vessel in Suriname waters around 6 pm on Sunday and carted off over $1M worth of fish even as a gang of sea bandits was busted in that country last week.
Owner of the boat, Badrudeen Khan of Mahaica told Stabroek News yesterday that five masked pirates, carrying three guns and cutlasses “broadsided” the captain, Mickey and a crew member to prevent them from looking at their faces.
He said his men were about 16 miles from the Coroni shore and were cooking when they saw a boat approaching at a slow rate. He said they did not become suspicious as they thought the men were fishermen.
“But when the pirates reach closer they started to fire several shots and they ordered the crew to lie on the ice box. Then they tell them to get up and go in the fish pen,” he related.
After that, Khan said the pirates removed two of the workers and held them at gunpoint while ordering them to discharge the fish into their boat. He said it took nearly two hours as the two men had to transfer “700 trout, 50 snapper and over 200 mackerel and king fish.”
The attackers also escaped with a drum of gasoline, one of the propellers from the engine, two cell phones, a compass and a global positioning system. He said before the pirates left they “destroyed the engine coil so the crew couldn’t start the boat to trace them.”
They questioned the crew about how long they had been out at sea and when they heard “13 days they tell them ’13 days and y’all aint reach in yet,’ as if they just finding things to say,” Khan said.
According to him his crew was left to drift until Monday afternoon when another boat came to their rescue and pulled them all the way to the Mahaica Bridge area. The crew arrived at around 11 am on
Tuesday.
Khan said his “expense to send the boat out was $500,000 and me have to find money to load back the boat.
This time is a hard time and ah have to bear up until I find the money to return.”
He said he made a report to the Mahaica Police Station and the ranks promised to pass the information on to the Springlands station. His captain was supposed to return to the station to give a statement but he was in too much pain to go yesterday.
Another fisherman from the East Coast told this newspaper he is fed-up with the piracy. He said the situation got “out-of-hand” within recent times and he is happy that the members of the Number 66 Fish Complex are making efforts to catch the pirates.
Seven pirates were caught in Suriname last week as they were talking about hijacking while drinking at a bar in Copenaam. A man who was working undercover for the complex made a report to the police and the men were traced to a boat.
A team of fishermen from the complex left on Friday and were able to identify four of the men. After receiving information they went to a creek at Amsterdam where wanted man, Kevin Narine was said to be hiding out and found items belonging to them, including fishing seines, drums of gasoline and engines.
Narine is still on the run but a woman said to be a close associate of one of the pirates and a few other men whom the fishers recognized were taken into custody.
And on Monday fishermen from the Number 66 Complex and from the East Coast travelled to the Eve Leary Police Station and identified a man who was reportedly involved in piracy.