At 9:30 pm yesterday a police boat of the Vietnam Marine Police Department landed in Vung Tau bringing along 11 pirates who had been arrested on the Zafirah ship they had robbed
At 9:30 pm yesterday a police boat of the Vietnam Marine Police Department landed in Vung Tau bringing along 11 pirates who had been arrested on the Zafirah ship they had robbed after forcing all nine crewmembers to leave the ship in a life raft.
According to initial testimonies of the pirates, they all are Indonesians.Earlier on the afternoon of November 19, the Department received messages from the Pirate Information Center under the International Maritime Bureau located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that the Zafirah had gone missing and it could have been attacked by pirates.
Colonel Dao Quang Hien (R), Chief of Staff of the Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province Border Guard, received the Zafirah ship's captain, Sann Winnaung, and other crewmembers in Vung Tau yesterday morning (Photo: Tuoi Tre) The latest location of the ship where the ship’s owner could contact the crew was about 110 nautical miles from Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone. Ordered by the Department, five police boats were deployed to track down the ship in distress.
On November 20, the police found out that the ship had entered Vietnam’s territorial waters and changed its directions continuously to avoid detection.On the morning of November 21, two local fishing boats, BV95192 and BV92350, found nine Zafirah sailors – five Burmese and four Indonesians – drifting on a life raft and rescued them.
Yesterday morning a rescue boat from the Vietnam Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) took these sailors to Vung Tau.
The ship’s captain, Sann Winnaung, a 56-year-old Burmese, told Vietnamese sea police that the pirates, all wearing masks, threatened that they would kill any sailors who resisted them.The pirates then stole the ship after dropping all nine crewmembers on the life raft, the victims said.At 2:20 Thursday two police boats spotted the stolen ship and signaled to ask it to stop.
Police used loudspeakers to call on the pirates to surrender, but they rejected the calling and continued sailing.Colonel Le Xuan Thanh, commander of the Zone III Maritime Police, ordered his staff to open fire to attack the pirates. At 4:50 pm police seized all of the 11 pirates and no casualties occurred during the attack and seizure, police said.