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The Belgian Merchant Navy at War · 1830–today

2009

Piracy: the Pompei

Ten crew held for more than seventy days by Somali pirates. It led to the first conviction of a pirate kingpin in Europe.

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In the database

The defining modern incident is the MV Pompei, a Belgian-flagged dredging and subsea rock-installation vessel of about 1,850 dwt, owned by the Belgian dredging groups DEME and Jan De Nul with the Dutch firm Herbosch-Kiere. On 18 April 2009 she was hijacked by Somali pirates a few hundred miles north of the Seychelles while sailing from Dubai towards the Seychelles and South Africa. Her ten crew – two Belgians, one Dutchman, three Filipinos and four Croatians – were held for more than seventy days. Ship and crew were released on 28 June 2009 after a ransom was dropped onto the deck by helicopter. A pirate spokesman told Reuters that 2.8 million dollars had been agreed; Belgian Defence Minister Pieter De Crem confirmed that a ransom was paid and that eight million had originally been demanded. The hijacking helped prompt the extension of the EU's Operation Atalanta.

In an October 2013 sting, the pirate kingpin Mohamed Abdi Hassan (“Afweyne”) was lured to Belgium – ostensibly to advise on a film about his life – and arrested at Brussels airport along with his accomplice Mohamed Moalin-Aden (“Tiiceey”). Federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle called him one of the most important and infamous pirate leaders, responsible for the hijacking of dozens of commercial vessels between 2008 and 2013. In March 2016 the Bruges criminal court sentenced Hassan in absentia to twenty years – the maximum – for the Pompei hijacking, and Moalin-Aden to five years, and ordered Hassan to pay over €20,000 to the vessel's Dutch captain and his family.

Belgian-owned dredging and merchant vessels operated widely in high-risk waters through the 2000s and 2010s, from the Gulf of Aden to West Africa, under armed-guard and naval-escort regimes. The Pompei is the only confirmed hijacking of a Belgian-flag vessel.

The vessels known by name

  1. M/V Pompei · Dredger · DEME / Jan De Nul / Herbosch-Kiere
    18 April 2009 · hijacked by Somali pirates and released after more than seventy days
    Vonnis rechtbank Brugge 2016; VRT NWS

Where to find more

The VRT NWS archive (2009 coverage); the Belgian federal prosecutor's file and the Bruges court judgment; Foreign Policy, “The Rise and Fall of Somalia's Pirate King”; EU NAVFOR Operation Atalanta records.