Royal Navy announces record cocaine bust

HMS Iron Duke seized more than five and a half tonnes of the drug in an operation off the coast of South America.

In the UK it would have a street value of £240 million, the Navy said.

Minister for the Armed Forces Mr Bill Rammell said: ''Again, the Royal Navy has successfully damaged the trade in this vile substance, which only serves to poison our communities. The crew rightly deserve our praise and thanks for the work they do on our behalf.''

The 138-foot fishing boat MV Cristal was spotted by a Navy helicopter crew in an area known for trafficking, which led to a dramatic swoop with the US coast guard and another British ship RFA Fort George.

In total 212 bales of cocaine were found, weighing about 26kg each. The crews then sank the drug smugglers' boat.

Prince William served on HMS Iron Duke last year when it seized cocaine worth £45 million in the Caribbean.

In July this year, the ship was involved in a night time operation off South America which netted more of the drug, with a street value of £33 million.

Commander Andrew Stacey said that an armed helicopter and rigid inflatable boats were sent to intercept the ship on September 15.

His crew then spent more than 24 hours painstakingly scouring the vessel for narcotics.

The drugs were hidden under the ship's regular stores, beneath a concrete floor and steel panels.

Tonnes of stock had to be moved, the hard floor broken up with sledge hammers and metal panels unbolted before the stash was revealed.

Cdr Stacey said: "This was our third successful drug bust in as many months but this surpasses anything we've had and anything the Navy had previously. It is the largest drugs bust by value, and by volume in terms of cocaine.

"It is a massive blow for the narcotics industry. My team are delighted and all our hard training and preparations have paid off."

After the bust the captured boat was in trouble and getting near a major shipping lane so the naval crew sank it with gun fire.

Several drug runners of different nationalities were arrested but Cdr Stacey could not reveal any more details.

The cocaine was stored on the Iron Duke for around 24 hours - because there was so much of it some had to be kept on deck under armed guard.

Cdr Stacey said: "We are very well prepared to defend ourselves. It was a big quantity and I was conscious of the fact that some people might want it back, but they would have a tough time getting it back from us."

HMS Iron Duke is on a six-month deployment to visit UK overseas territories during hurricane season.

It remains on stand-by to take part in anti-narcotics operations.

Royal Navy captures Somali pirates... and sets them free

4th June 2009. This sound familiar

Nearly a dozen pirates armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machineguns and grappling hooks have been seized in the Gulf of Aden, after being intercepted by a Royal Navy warship.

Two skiffs had been detected by the radar on board HMS Portland, a Type 23 frigate, which was originally designed for anti-submarine warfare.

Suspecting that they were “not innocent fishing vessels”, the frigate, commanded by Commander Tim Henry, steamed closer to the skiffs and saw that both vessels were filled with weaponry and ammunition. The ship’s Lynx helicopter was sent to hover over the skiffs while teams of Royal Marine and navy personnel in rigid inflatable boats sped towards the craft and disarmed the ten men on board. The Lynx was armed with a machinegun and snipers.

“The skiffs were equipped with extra barrels of fuel, grappling hooks and a cache of weapons that included rocket-propelled grenades, machineguns and ammunition,” navy officials said.

Because of the rules of engagement, however, the ten pirates had to be set free. “We can only arrest suspected pirates if we catch them in the act or on the point of launching an attack on a vessel,” a Ministry of Defence official said.

“Clearly, with all the weaponry in the skiffs, there was an intent to commit piracy, but we hadn’t actually caught them in the middle of an attack so we had to release them.”

All the weapons and ammunition were confiscated and the ten men were piled into the larger of the two skiffs, provided with enough fuel to get them to the Somali coast and told to go home. Some of the fuel was then put into the other skiff and set on fire.

“The pirates tend to use the smaller boats to go up against the merchant vessels they are trying to hijack, so we basically removed or destroyed all the piracy paraphernalia,” the MoD official said.

HMS Portland is serving with the Combined Maritime Forces Task Force 151, a multinational naval group that currently consists of ships from the United States, Britain, Turkey, South Korea, Singapore, Denmark and Japan. It was established to conduct counter-piracy operations.

The latest successful action against pirates in the Gulf of Aden took place on Tuesday. Dramatic pictures of the sequence of events that led to the burning of one of the skiffs were released by the MoD yesterday. The Royal Navy frigate had identified and pursued the skiffs in co-ordination with a Spanish maritime patrol aircraft.

“This international collaboration cannot be understated and as more countries join the fight, we will continue to work together to help deter, disrupt and thwart criminal acts of piracy,” said Commodore Tim Lowe, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces.

HMS Portland has been involved recently in several other counterpiracy operations. Commander Henry said that his ship was playing her part in keeping the area safe for internationaltrade.

Reported by the TIMES

Royal Navy may be forced to free captured pirates

I don't know if I want to Laugh or Cry.... So why the hell are we patrolling to capture modern day pirates if we have to let them go..... I think we should just put all Pirates back in the Sea and keep the boats or get a plank fitted on every warship....

Pirates captured by Royal Navy warships patrolling off East Africa may have to be set free because there is no international agreement over where they can be legally prosecuted.

Internal Foreign Office documents seen by The Independent on Sunday lay bare the behind-the-scenes wrangling that could neuter the UK-led effort against the growing problem of pirates terrorising vessels in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

The collection of memos and briefing notes detail critical problems with Operation Atalanta since it was hurriedly agreed by the European Union last November in response to a series of high-profile pirate attacks around the Horn of Africa.

Although the UK volunteered to lead the EU's first naval mission, officials have consistently warned ministers that its impact could be limited by the inability to prosecute captured pirates, who are therefore freed – potentially to resume their threat to shipping. Authorities say criminals attacked more than 100 ships off Somalia last year, including hijackings with multimillion-dollar ransom demands.

A supertanker carrying two million barrels of oil became the biggest commercial vessel ever hijacked last November. The Sirius Star was eventually released two months later after its owners parachuted a £2m ransom – reduced from £16m – on to the ship.

EU defence ministers admitted last month that they were struggling to break through complicated international legal agreements to establish how to handle pirates taken into custody, where they could be tried, and what laws apply. They accept that court action – perhaps via special arrangements with selected countries in the region – would act as a significant deterrent.

Documents now reveal that British officials warned of the legal problems – and their potential to embarrass ministers who had committed the nation's forces to the headline-grabbing operation – from the start.

As early as last November, a briefing to ministers pointed out that: "The legal difficulties regarding arrest/detention of pirates mean that it is unlikely that pirates will be able to be brought to justice in the courts."

In a further memo, on 3 December, officials advised David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, to agree to the launch of Atalanta, "despite failure to conclude ... all the legal agreements sought with regional countries on handover of pirate suspects, accepting that this increases operational and reputational risk in the period until these agreements are concluded". The document also said trying pirates in UK courts was "not desirable", but stated that "the default option ... of releasing the pirates on to a Somali beach after destruction of pirate boats/weapons/ equipment is not attractive either in deterrence or presentational terms".

However, given the Government's prominent role in the operation, it was judged that "a decision not to launch the mission would be embarrassing and, even with careful media handling, we could expect heavy criticism".

Kenya is one of four countries favoured as the regional venue for trials, and Britain is thinking of offering to help its legal system cope with the extra work. The Department of Transport is considering new legislation allowing pirates captured abroad to be tried in the UK.

The shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said: "It will make a mockery of British efforts to combat Somali piracy if we have no effective system to deal with those captured by the Royal Navy, and pirates are simply let loose to attack again."

Indian navy shows the Nelson touch

Taken from an Indian Navy Website. Why don't we tell the rest of the World that our Governments given up on us. I think we need to put some adverts in the Times looking for Admirals, Captains and Government Officials. The key requirement will be back bone. Whatever happened to ships of wood and men of steel. Do NOT let our Government get away with letting the Royal Navy shrink in size to around 17 ships over the next ten years. It makes me sad that someone in the Indian Navy can make comments like this and we cannot even argue our case. Come on Lads..... Lets get stuck in an tackle the Pirate issue...

The Gulf of Aden is awash with Somalian pirates who have been cheerfully capturing merchant vessels and holding them and their crews to ransom, all this despite the presence of American and European warships supposedly there to prevent these nefarious activities.

All the commanders (or their on-board PR men) say, when invited to explain why they can’t prevent the piracy or do anything about the pirates’ lairs, well known to all of them, is to say that they can’t do anything because it might put the captured crews at hazard.

Well the Indian navy is taking a more robust attitude, sinking a pirate boat a month or so ago and now capturing 23 of them as they tried to pinch merchant vessel the MV Gibe.

A couple of hundred years ago the Royal Navy cemented its reputation as the master of the seas through the audacious exploits of the captains of its fast, heavily-armed frigates against piratical riff-raff like these Somalis.

Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick Brien’s collection of novels is how we envisage them.

Now the British are agonising about building two huge (and probably useless and vulnerable) aircraft carriers at a time when they have neither the frigates, or apparently the will, to carry on in the glorious traditions of the Royal Navy and police the seas.

They should take a leaf out of the Indian navy’s book.